Structure and Properties of Novel Compounds of Silicon, Germanium and Tin

摘要

Our work on the organic chemistry of silicon, germanium, and tin containingcompounds concentrated on the investigation of novel structures and bonding situations, particularly compounds of multiply bonded and divalent atoms of these elements. In the recent years, our interest gradually gravitated towards an investigation of the electronic structure and bonding in saturated compounds of these elements, most of all, silicon. We believe that an understanding of this subject will have quite general consequences for the understanding of the nature of delocalized chemical bonding in saturated compounds of all main-group elements. After all, the fact that bonding in saturated compounds is not strictly a matter of entirely localized single bonds is responsible for many theoretically and practically important properties of these compounds: sigma delocalization plays an essential role in phenomena as diverse as charge transfer through 'inert' spacers, propagation of substituent effects, propagation of spin density in saturated radicals, nuclear-nuclear coupling in NMR of saturated molecules, their optical activity, far UV absorption, ionization, etc.