The Alkali Metal Hydride Approach to Diborane

We soon discovered that lithium hydride would reduce boron trifluoride in ethyl ether solution to give diborane (7). 

Lithium hydride added diborane to form lithium borohydride (7). 

Finally, uranium borohydride could be produced by the method we had originally used (7). 

This was obviously a major improvement over the original procedure, which involved many more steps, some of them quite difficult. We happily reported this improved synthesis and undertook to use it to produce uranium(IV) borohydride for large-scale testing. 

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