Organosilicon oxides

The siloxane chains which form the structural basis for these organosilicon oxides have been treated in the discussion of siloxanes in... 

Super Balls are often made of a silicon compound called organosilicon oxide (Si(0CH2CH3)20). 

A mild method for the synthesis of acid chlorides has been described which involves the reaction of a trichloromethyl-arene (98) with an organosilicon oxide, resulting in the formation of the aa-dichlorobenzyloxytrimethylsilane (99). This undergoes /S-elimination of trimethylchlorosilane (Scheme 13), which can be hydrolysed to hexamethyldisiloxane and re-used. 

The first useful organosilicon preceramic polymer, a silicon carbide fiber precursor, was developed by S. Yajima and his coworkers at Tohoku University in Japan [5]. As might be expected on the basis of the 2 C/l Si ratio of the (CH3)2SiCl2 starting material used in this process, the ceramic fibers contain free carbon as well as silicon carbide. A typical analysis [5] showed a composition 1 SiC/0.78 C/0.22 Si02- (The latter is introduced in the oxidative cure step of the polycarbosilane fiber). 

Exceeding the limitation of molecular dynamics, the steric requirement of trimethylsilyl groups can cause drastic changes both in structure and of molecular properties of organosilicon compounds. For illustration, the so-called "Wurster s-Blue11 radical ions are selected On one-electron oxidation of tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine, its dark-blue radical cation, detected as early as 1879 [11a], is gene-... 

The ring-opening of the cyclopropane nitrosourea 233 with silver trifiate followed by stereospecific [4 + 2] cycloaddition yields 234 [129]. (Scheme 93) Oxovanadium(V) compounds, VO(OR)X2, are revealed to be Lewis acids with one-electron oxidation capability. These properties permit versatile oxidative transformations of carbonyl and organosilicon compounds as exemplified by ring-opening oxygenation of cyclic ketones [130], dehydrogenative aroma-tization of 2-eyclohexen-l-ones [131], allylic oxidation of oc,/ -unsaturated carbonyl compounds [132], decarboxylative oxidation of a-amino acids [133], oxidative desilylation of silyl enol ethers [134], allylic silanes, and benzylic silanes [135]. 

When an organotin oxide or alkoxide is the starting material, reduction is performed with LiAlFLt221 or organosilicon hydrides like methylhydropolysiloxane (MeHSiO) 222,... 

Chemical reactivity of unfunctionalized organosilicon compounds, the tetraalkylsilanes, are generally very low. There has been virtually no method for the selective transformation of unfunctionalized tetraalkylsilanes into other compounds under mild conditions. The electrochemical reactivity of tetraalkylsilanes is also very low. Kochi et al. have reported the oxidation potentials of tetraalkyl group-14-metal compounds determined by cyclic voltammetry [2]. The oxidation potential (Ep) increases in the order of Pb < Sn < Ge < Si as shown in Table 1. The order of the oxidation potential is the same as that of the ionization potentials and the steric effect of the alkyl group is very small. Therefore, the electron transfer is suggested as proceeding by an outer-sphere process. However, it seems to be difficult to oxidize tetraalkylsilanes electro-chemically in a practical sense because the oxidation potentials are outside the electrochemical windows of the usual supporting electrolyte/solvent systems (>2.5 V). 

The electrooxidation of organosilicon compounds containing heteroatoms has been investigated extensively and various synthetic applications have been developed. Cooper and Owen studied the oxidation potentials of a series of silyl-substituted amines, phosphines, and sulfides, and observed that silyl substitution at the carbon adjacent to the heteroatom caused a significant decrease in the oxidation potentials (Table 4) [35]. 

On the basis of these concepts a number of electrochemical reactions of organosilicon compounds have been developed. Although a rich variety of synthetic applications of the anodic oxidation of organosilicon compounds has been made in recent years, the application of the cathodic reduction of such compounds has been less studied and will hopefully be uncovered in the near future. 

Watanabe and Ohnishi [39] have proposed another model for the polymer consumption rate (in place of Eq. 2) and have also integrated their model to obtain the time dependence of the oxide thickness. Time dependent oxide thickness measurement in the transient regime is the clearest way to test the kinetic assumptions in these models however, neither model has been subjected to experimental verification in the transient regime. Equation 9 may be used to obtain time dependent oxide thickness estimates from the time dependence of the total thickness loss, but such results have not been published. Hartney et al. [42] have recently used variable angle XPS spectroscopy to determine the time dependence of the oxide thickness for two organosilicon polymers and several etching conditions. They did not present kinetic model fits to their results, nor did they compare their results to time dependent thickness estimates from the material balance (Eq. 9). More research on the transient regime is needed to determine the validity of Eq. 10 or the comparable result for the kinetic model presented by Watanabe and Ohnishi [39]. 

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