ORGANO-E IV COMPOUNDS OF TRANSITION METALS

Compounds containing mixed E—E bonds have been increasingly studied and a number of crystal structures have appeared in the last five years — interestingly, only three years ago Sheldrick4a could report only one determination of the Ge—Si bond length and that from silylgermane. 

In the last few years, a further exciting development has been the characterization of prismanes, cubanes and similar clusters paralleling the similar interst in organic chemistry—though we do not yet have a buckminsterfullerene. 

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