TY - INPR A1 - Wang, Sunewang Rixin A1 - Arrowsmith, Merle A1 - Braunschweig, Holger A1 - Dewhurst, Rian A1 - Dömling, Michael A1 - Mattock, James A1 - Pranckevicius, Conor A1 - Vargas, Alfredo T1 - Monomeric 16-Electron π-Diborene Complexes of Zn(II) and Cd(II) T2 - Journal of the American Chemical Society N2 - Despite the prevalence of stable π-complexes of most d\(^{10}\) metals, such as Cu(I) and Ni(0), with ethylene and other olefins, complexation of d\(^{10}\) Zn(II) to simple olefins is too weak to form isolable complexes due to the metal ion's limited capacity for π-backdonation. By employing more strongly donating π- ligands, namely neutral diborenes with a high-lying π(B=B) or- bital, monomeric 16-electron M(II)-diborene (M = Zn, Cd) π- complexes were synthesized in good yields. Metal–B2 π- interactions in both the solid and solution state were confirmed by single-crystal X-ray analyses and their solution NMR and UV-vis absorption spectroscopy, respectively. The M(II) centers adopt a trigonal planar geometry and interact almost symmetrically with both boron atoms. The MB2 planes significantly twist out of the MX\(_2\) planes about the M-centroid(B–B) vector, with angles rang- ing from 47.0° to 85.5°, depending on the steric interactions be- tween the diborene ligand and the MX\(_2\) fragment. KW - boron KW - transition metal complex KW - diborene Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-153058 N1 - This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2017, 139 (31), pp 10661–10664, which has been published in final form at doi:10.1021/jacs.7b06644. ER -