Controlled cleavage of R8Si8O12 frameworks: a revolutionary new method for manufacturing precursors to hybrid inorganic–organic materials

Cube-octameric polyhedral silsesquioxanes (R8Si8O12) react with strong acids (HX) to produce R8Si8O11X2 frameworks resulting from selective cleavage of one Si–O–Si linkage; subsequent hydrolysis affords R8Si8O11(OH)2 frameworks derived from the net hydrolysis of one Si–O–Si linkage in R8Si8O12; these results demonstrate for the first time that readily available R8Si8O12 frameworks can be used as precursors to incompletely condensed Si/O frameworks and have important implications for the manufacture of hybrid inorganic–organic materials based on discrete polyhedral clusters of silicon and oxygen.