Bonding considerations disilene

Although the chemistry of disilenes has been developed considerably after the isolation of stable disilenes by West, Finle and Michl, rather little has been known about the mechanism, especially on the stereochemistry for the addition reactions to Si=Si bonds of nucleophiles or electrophiles. West and coworkers reported that the addition reaction of ethanol to ( )-l,2-di-t-butyl-l,2-dimesityldisilene in THE gave a 1 1 mixture of two diastereomers of alkoxysilanes (equation 9), suggesting a stepwise mechanism. However, the bulky substituents necessary to stabilize disilenes sometimes complicate the stereochemistry. In fact, for the addition reaction of water to the parent disilene (H2Si=SiH2), theoretical calculation predicted a concerted-type four-center-like transition state, leading to a yw-addition product . 

---