Cluster compounds boranes incorporating

Heteroatom Cluster Compounds Incorporating Polyhedral Boranes as Ligands... 

A separate series of closo-carboranes, isoelectronic with the BnH2 dianions and the neutral QB 2H compounds, consists of the monocarbon anions CB iH (Table 5-3). The preparative routes to these species vary widely, but a commonly used method for incorporating a single carbon atom into a borane cage involves the conversion of cyanoboranes to amino derivatives the cyano carbon atom satisfies its valence requirements via absorption into the cluster framework. 

Boranes and carboranes are comprised of a-aromatic cage-like structures with boron and carbon vertices ranging from small tetrahedral to supra-icosahedral clusters. Despite more than four decades of work with this class of inorganic compound, there have been few reports of their photophysical properties, with a distinct paucity of information regarding luminescence. Carboranes have nevertheless been incorporated into photophysically active metal complexes, usually as ancillary components. But what of boranes, carboranes, and metallacarboranes (where a transition metal atom can either be an integral vertex in the polyhedral skeletal framewoik or an exterior component thereof) as chromophores themselves and their resultant optoelectronic behavior In this arena, there are very few contributors. 

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