Carboalumination of a chromium–chromium quintuple bond

Abstract

Bonds are at the very heart of chemistry. Although the order of carbon–carbon bonds only extends to triple bonds, metal–metal bond orders of up to five are known for stable compounds, particularly between chromium atoms. Carbometallation and especially carboalumination reactions of carbon–carbon double and triple bonds are a well established synthetic protocol in organometallic chemistry and organic synthesis. We now extend these reactions to compounds containing chromium–chromium quintuple bonds. Analogous reactivity patterns indicate that such quintuple bonds are not as exotic as previously assumed. Yet the particularities of these reactions reflect the specific nature of the high metal–metal bond orders. Extremely short quintuple bonds between chromium atoms have recently been discovered. Carboalumination reactions have now been performed to further investigate the properties of these unusual bonds, and show that they have interesting analogies to lower-order bonds, as well as revealing more about the nature of quintuple bonds.

Cite this article

Noor, A., Glatz, G., Müller, R. et al. Carboalumination of a chromium–chromium quintuple bond. Nature Chem 1, 322–325 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.255

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