Planar tetracoordinated silicon in silicon carbonyl complexes: a DFT approach

Recently, some works have focused attention on the reactivity of the silicon atom with closed-shell molecules. With CO, silicon may form a few relatively stable compounds, i.e., Si(CO), Si(CO)(2), and Si[C(2)O(2)], while the existence of polycarbonyl (n > 2) silicon complexes has been rejected by current literature. In this paper, the reaction of silicon with carbonyl has been reinvestigated by density functional calculations. It has been found that the tetracoordinated planar Si(CO)(4) complex is thermodynamically stable. In Si(CO), silicon carbonyl, and Si(CO)(2), silicon dicarbonyl, the CO moieties are datively bonded to Si, and Si[C(2)O(2)], c-silicodiketone, is similar to the compounds formed by silicon and ethylene; Si(CO)(4), silicon tetracarbonyl, may be viewed as a resonance between the extreme configurations (CO)(2)Si + 2CO and 2CO + Si(CO)(2). A detailed orbital analysis has shown that the Si bonding with four CO is consistent with the use of sp(2)d-hybridized orbitals on silicon, giving rise to a planar structure about Si.