Jan Vrána

Uncover the strength of polyhedral dicarbaboranes as the next generation of superbases in organocatalysis

Although boron compounds appear in many chemical transformations, it is hard to imagine, these usually Lewis acidic, species would act as Lewis bases or even base-catalysts. Here we show that the adduct o-2, formed by the reaction of closo−1,2-dicarbadecaborane(10) with two equivalents of an N-heterocyclic carbene, exh...