Chemical Reduction and Dimerization of 1‐Chloro‐2,3,4,5‐tetraphenylborole

As neutral isoelectronic analogues of the elusive cyclopentadienyl cation, boroles have been of interest for their prospective applications as strong Lewis acids, chromophores, and electron acceptors. Recently our group discovered a π-nucleophilic boryl anion based on the borole system. In an effort to extend borole chemistry, we now report the molecular structure of 1-chloro-2,3,4,5-tetraphenylborole (1) and its corresponding borole dianion resulting from the two-electron reduction of 1 with KC(8). The thermally induced dimerization of 1 yields an unprecedented boracyclohexadiene/borolene spiro-bicyclic compound and the resulting dimer was fully characterized including a single-crystal X-ray analysis.