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First sighting of benzoborirene In 2000, chemist Ralf I. Kaiser and coworkers used crossed supersonic beams of boron atoms and ethylene molecules to produce the aromatic three-membered ring borirene, (CH)2BH, in the gas phase. Kaiser, most recently at the University of York, in England, has now extended the method and used it to produce another elusive molecule: benzoborirene [Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 41, 2350 (2002)]. The crossed beams in the latest experiments were those of atomic boron-11 and perdeuterated benzene. In collaboration with chemist Holger F. Bettinger of Ruhr University Bochum, in Germany, Kaiser used time-of-flight mass spectrometry and high-level electronic structure computations to conclude that perdeuterated benzoborirene (shown) is the reaction product observed at a mass-to-charge ratio of 93. This is the first time that "a boron-bearing, aromatic, bicyclic molecule has been synthesized," the researchers point out. The boron-hydrogen exchange reaction occurring in these experiments might be exploited to make more complex heteroaromatic polycyclic molecules containing boron, they tell C&EN. |
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