Mono(Silylene)‐Stabilized Borylenes for Small Molecule Activation

Although base-stabilized borylenes are now a decade-old concept, the number of experimentally isolable mono(Lewis base)-stabilized borylenes is scarce. In this work, we have designed a few mono(Lewis base)-stabilized borylenes with silylenes as the Lewis base. Quantum chemical calculations revealed that the designed systems possess appreciable donor and acceptor properties that motivated us to investigate their potential toward the splitting of enthalpically strong E-H bonds (E = H, CH₃, NHPh) as well as binding of CO and N₂. All the activation and the binding processes by the proposed borylenes were found to possess either better or comparable activation barriers compared to that obtained for cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene-stabilized borylene.