3 ms·
To answer the previous comment, there is no special preparation of the potassium t-butoxide necessary. The reaction itself is indeed quite simple to carry out.
by subnaught 11y ago
To answer the previous comment, there is no special preparation of the potassium t-butoxide necessary. The reaction itself is indeed quite simple to carry out. (In fact, this is one of the things that makes the research significant.) The achievement of the researchers was simply to find this reaction, which they did in part by paying attention to some early results that others may have not noticed or chosen to ignore.
Right now, the "key new idea" is simply that this is possible. But because the reaction is so general (i.e. it works on a wide variety of substrates) and so unexpected, it's clear that some new unifying ideas are just around the corner.
- jedharris 11y agoNot being a bench chemist I have no sense of what "the reaction" is, even looking at the paper. Could you describe it?
- refurb 11y agoHeteroaromatic silanes (rings made mostly of carbon but also include a non-carbon atom like nitrogen) are useful synthetic intermediates (you can use them to make other molecules). In the past, you usually made them using precious metal catalysts (really expensive metals like rhodium; the reactions are easy to screw up). The metal atom basically inserts between the ring and a hydrogen (the outside of the rings are covered in hydrogens). You then added a silane source and it would displace the metal complex (through a pretty complex pathway) to get your desired product (the original ring with a silicon atom where a hydrogen used to be). This new method creates the exact same product. However, instead of using a precious metal catalyst, you can just add this really common base (potassium t-butoxide) and your silicon source and "poof!" the reaction is complete. No expensive reagents! What makes this so science-news worthy is that I don't think anyone would have guessed this would have worked. A good analogy would be a really complex math problem. Folks can solve it, but it's a lengthy and complex proof. Suddenly someone comes by and says "just take the cosine and divide by 9" and you realize that this super simple approach works better than anything else.