Carboranes with Exopolyhedral Boron-Tetrel Bonds

The development of main group element species for use in chemical spaces is dependent on the continued diversification of stable and tunable substituents to leverage reactivity at these non transition metal centers. In this work we introduce boron-bound icosahedral carboranes as stable and tunable substituents on group 14 elements in place of more traditional alkyl and aryl groups. Herein we report the salt melt synthesis of B(9)-carboranyl stannane as well as the first reported B(9)-carboranyl germane species from B-mercuro-carborane starting material as well as derivatization of the aforementioned species via Grignard reagents. In addition, we report the germanium disubstituted and trisubstituted carborane species illustrating the generality of the salt melt synthetic method from B-mercuro-carborane.