The B30 anion

10 June 2014 - Chemical zoo

Boron_30_cluster.PNG As highlighted here a B18 dianion was recently postulated (computation only) to have a rotating inner ring. A B30 anion reported here is also flat but has a hexagonal hole. Li et al. as described in Angewandte pointed a laser at a piece of isotopically enriched boron, collected the debris in a molecular beam , isolated B30 anionic clusters via a time-of-flight mass spectrometer and identified them using photoelectron spectroscopy. The theoretical part of the work involved the calculation of energies and simulated PES spectra of 3600 B30 isomers. Two isomers were found to be located on global minima. Both of them were found to have these holes and they were also each others enantiomers. The simulated PES spectra matched the experimental ones. It was not possible to do chemical bonding calculations on the B30 anion but if the neutral B30 cluster is to give an indication, the peripheral bonds are regular sigma bonds and the remaining pi bonds (4c-2e, 5c-2e(huh?)) add up to an aromatic 4N+2 number