Unique Low-Valent Boron Chemistry at a Metal-Coordinated N2 Fragment

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Holger Braunschweig
• Subject Area: Inorganic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 555927973

Low-valent boron chemistry is one of the most exciting areas of contemporary inorganic chemistry thanks to the strong ambiphilicity and unusual reactivity of the molecules. Recently, we developed methods to install reactive boron units onto transition-metal-bound N2 ligands, and transformed these into a range of new product classes of low-valent (oxidation states +1 and +2) and low-coordinate (di- and tricoordinate) boron compounds, including an entirely new class of metal-capped wire-like complexes featuring only non-carbon atoms. This project exploits these new results by exploring the downstream chemistry of these new molecule classes, their reactivity, and chemical manipulation of their redox states.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants