Silyl complexes with actinides

The electropositive lanthanide and actinide elements are expected to form silyl complexes with properties similar to those of the early transition metals. Recently the first... 

The silyl amide type ligands have been used extensively in rare earth chemistry, as well as in actinide and transition metal chemistry, to stabilize electronically unsaturated metal centers due to the available lone pair on the nitrogen donor atom. Because of the relatively larger steric encumbrance, the rare earth complexes with silyl amide type ligands often exhibit low coordination numbers. As a consequence, the large and electropositive rare earth metal centers are accessible to external reagents, which make them more active in many reactions. 

As for actinide silyl complexes in general not much is known about oligosilanyl actinide complexes. Only three examples at all have been reported so far. The groups of Marks [475] and Cummins [476] showed that reactions of uranium (TV) halides with (Me3Si)3SiLi give the respective tris(trimethylsilyl)silylated complexes (22). 

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