Silylene-isonitrile complexes

Reactions of a Silylene-Isonitrile Complex as a Masked Silylene. 689... 

As mentioned above, there have been no examples of stable diarylsilylene although dialkyl- or diamino-substituted silylenes are now available as stable crystalline compounds. However, Tokitoh et al. found that the overcrowded diarylsilylene-isonitrile complexes 139 act as a free silylene 138 in solution even at room temperature. Since there is a severe limitation in a study concerning the reactivities of silylenes under the conventional generating conditions, the reactivity of silylene-isonitrile complexes 139 as a masked silylene is of great interest. 

Consequently, the reactivity of silylene-isonitrile complexes 139 as a masked silylene may provide us with not only a new and useful synthetic building block for a variety of organosUicon compounds but also a new research field in silylene chemistry. 

Similar generation of palladium-silylene complexes may be involved in reaction of oligosilanes with aryl isonitriles giving four-membered rearranged products 95, although the mechanism has not yet been clarified (Eq.49) [81,86]. 

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