Mounting the Victims

The shackled victim, an a,w-bis(3-tosyloxypropyl)oligosilane, was attached to the rack by treatment with cesium [m]staflane-1 3(m-i)dithiolate to form the macrocycles 1[2,6] or 1[2,8] bydito-sylalkyl/Cs-thiolate macrocyclization (50). 

Dimethylsilylene extrusion shortens the silicon backbone of per-methylated oligosilanes by one Me2Si unit and is known (27) to be the dominant photochemical process. Starting with racked hexa-silane l[m,6] and octasilane l[m,8], all Si chain lengths from n = 4—8 become available in useful yields. As the extended silicon 

For some spectroscopic studies, it is desirable to avoid the presence of a sulfide moiety and we have therefore examined its oxidation to a sulfone. It was not clear initially how easy a selective oxidation would be in the presence of an oligosilane chain in the molecule, but it turned out to be no problem at all. A small-scale experiment showed that the double sulfone undergoes the 

We have described the preparation of a series of permethylated linear oligosilanes containing 4—8 silicon atoms and stretched alongside an [mjstaffane rack. Presently, the procedures are illustrated for the case m = 2 but they appear to be general and several racked oligosilanes with m = 3 have already been prepared. Such 

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