SULFUR'S TURN FOR MULTIPLE BONDS

Abstract

THE SYNTHESIS OF COMPOUNDS with multiple bonds between main-group elements in the third row or lower of the periodic table has brought much excitement to inorganic and theoretical chemists. But Canadian chemist Jack Passmore, whose group has prepared some of the compounds, has felt a bit like a spectator. That's because the spotlight mainly has been on alkene and alkyne analogs of group 14 elements silicon, germanium, tin, and lead, while Passmore and his colleagues have focused on group 16 and 17 elements, particularly sulfur. After years of work, Passmore, a professor at the University of New Brunswick, Frederic ton, now believes he has definitive experimental evidence that the S 2 I 4 2+ cation in S 2 I 4 (MF 6 ) 2 , where M = As or Sb, contains a sulfur-sulfur bond with the highest bond order for a homonuclear multiple bond involving a heavy main-group element ( Inorg Chem . 2005 , 44 , 1660). The research was carried out by graduate student Scott Brownridge, postdoc Carsten ...