Linking up with Mercury

Species featuring group 12 to group 12 bonds have lately become the subject of much interest and discussion, as have species containing homo-nuclear metal to metal bonds. This Hot Communication from Paul Weiss, Shiv Khanna, Ayusman Sen and colleagues details the discovery of a dimeric zintl anion featuring an Hg-Hg bond.

Molecular orbital diagram of the dimeric zintl ion

Molecular orbital diagram of the dimeric zintl ion

The new zintl phase contains [As7HgHgAs7]4− ions with an unsupported Hg-Hg bond, as characterized by cyclic voltammetry, molecular orbital diagram, band gap energy and Raman spectra. To find out more about the group’s findings you can download there paper below, which is free to access for 4 weeks.

On the stability of an unsupported mercury–mercury bond linking group 15 Zintl clusters
Sukhendu Mandal, Arthur C. Reber, Meichun Qian, Ran Liu, Hector M. Saavedra, Saikat Sen, Paul S. Weiss, Shiv N. Khanna and Ayusman Sen
Dalton Trans., 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2DT30083D

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