Chemists finally isolate stable oxoboranes after six decades of failure
The work was published in collaboration with the Phukan group at Tezpur University, whose computational contributions supported the experimental findings. Funding was provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Department of Science & Technology (DST) of India. The research carries the DOI 10.1038/s41557-026-02272-w. For a field that had largely written off oxoboranes as unisolable, the Würzburg results mark a turning point. A target that stood for over 60 years has been met not through heroic conditions or exotic intermediates, but through an unexpected reaction between a diboracumulene and simple ketones, yielding stable orange and yellow solids that chemists can now finally hold, analyse and build upon. Subject of Research: Synthesis and isolation of stable oxoboranes with boron-oxygen triple bonds Article Title: A 60-Year…