Organo-boron compounds

Organic Syntheses and Organic Reactions, Jack and his students published research papers on organo-boron compounds, furan derivatives, dienes, ketene derivatives, the structure of gliotoxin, and biosynthesis of isoprene derivatives. 

Some organo-boron compounds have also been recently introduced as flame-retardants. 

This method avoids the need for a coupling agent. However, organo lithium initiators are expensive and unstable. Instead, organic aluminum boron compounds can be used as initiators (12). 

There are currently three general methods for the production of boron-stabilized carbanions, each of which has analogies in caibonyl chemistry. The cleavage of a 1,1-diboiylalkane by base readily yields the desired anion in a fashion similar to the base cleavage of a -dicaibonyl compound. Deprotonation a to a boron atom can be accomplished directly in special circumstances, as can the addition of an organo-metallic compound to a vinylborane, which is similar to conjugate addition to an a,p-unsaturated carbonyl compound. Each of these methods is treated in detail in Ae next three sections. 

Compounds of metals and alkyl or aryl groups are frequently spontaneously ignitible in air, especially the lower members of homologous scries, such as the methyl and ethyl compounds. The metals in the most active compounds are the alkali metals and aluminum, zinc, and arsenic. The nonmetals boron and phosphorus also furnish active members, which conventionally are classed with the metal-organic (sometimes called organo-metallic) compounds. It is noteworthy that the alkyls of silicon do not flame in air. 

Bickel, M. and Wedemeyer, H. (1991) Handbook of Inorganic and Organo-metallic Chemistry, Boron Compounds, 4th Suppl, 8th edn, vol. 3a, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. 

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