February Chementator Briefs

Flat Silicon Compounds

Researchers at the University of Bonn (Germany; www.uni-bonn.de), led by professor Alexander C. Filippou of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry, have constructed silicon-containing molecules in which the four ligands do not form a tetrahedron, but a distorted square — a trapezoid. They lie in one plane together with the silicon. The influence of the unusual structure on the properties of Si —an important element for the electronics industry — is completely unclear at the moment.