Organosilicon compounds and silicones

Transient reaction species containing Si=C bonds have been known since about 1966 and can be generated thermally, photolytically, or even chemically. A decade later Me2Si=CHMe 

Corey and P. P. Gasper (eds.), Silicon Chemistry, EUis Horwood, Chichester, 1988, 565 pp. 

Zeldin, K. J. Wynne and H. R. Alcock (eds.). Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers, ACS Symposium Series 360 (1988) 512 pp. 

Patai and Z. Rappoport (eds.). The Chemistry of Organic Silicon Compounds (2 vols.), Wiley, Chichester, 1989, 892 pp. and 1668 pp. 

Ziche and R. West, Heteroatom Chemistry 2, 335-55 (1991). This is a very readable account of current work, and includes an update of ref. 73 with a further 222 references. 

Well over 100000 organosilicon compounds have been synthesized. Of these, during the past few decades, silicone oils, elastomers and resins have become major industrial products. Many organosilicon compounds have considerable thermal stability and chemical inertness e.g. SiPha can be distilled in air at its bp 428°, as can PhaSiCl (bp 378°) and Ph2SiCl2 (bp 305°). These, and innumerable similar compounds, reflect the considerable strength of the Si-C bond which is, indeed, comparable with that of the C-C bond (p. 338). A further illustration is the compound SiC which closely resembles diamond in its properties (p. 334). Catenation and the formation of multiple bonds are further similarities with carbon chemistry, though these features are less prominent in organosilicon chemistry and much of the work in these areas is of recent 

Polyhedron 12, 2431-46 (1993) and references cited therein. M. Driess, Adv. Organomet. Chem. 39. 193-229 (1996) — also deals with sila-arsenes containing Si=As bonds). 

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