Boron and beryllium finally shake hands

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The first non-cluster bond between boron and
beryllium has been reported by scientists in
Germany.
10 years ago, few reactions existed where boron
behaved as an nucleophile. That all changed with
the advent of lithium diazaborolide in 2006 , and
boron has been partnering up with myriad main-
group, transition metal and lanthanide elements
ever since. However, despite beryllium sitting right
next to boron in the periodic table, a classical
two-centre/two-electron bond had never been
reported between the two neighbours, until now.
Holger Braunschweig and colleagues at the Julius
Maximilians University of Würzburg have
successfully synthesised a linear beryllium bis
(diazaborolyl) compound by reacting lithium
diazaborolide with beryllium chloride. It contains
two highly polar covalent bonds between
beryllium and boron, with the beryllium atom as
the electrophilic centre – in contrast to the ionic
bonding that is typical between lithium
diazaborolide and other s-block elements, but in
keeping with the established chemistry of
beryllium.
REFERENCES
1. T Arnold et al , Chem. Commun. , 2015,
DOI: 10.1039/c4cc08519a (This article is free to
access until 6 January 2015.)
2. Y Segawa, M Yamashita and K Nozaki, 2006,
Science, 314, 113 (DOI: 10.1126/
science.1131914)