Hexacoordinated carbon or tetracovalent silicon?

Hexacoordinate silicon has been claimed to occur in bis(8-dimethylamino-naphth-1-yl)silanes on the basis of X-ray data and NMR spectra. Very much the same effects are shown by a bis(8-dimethylamino-naphth-1-yl)carbinol, pointing to essentially the same bonding in the Si and C compounds. Faced with the choice that either the carbon in the carbinol is hexacoordinate, too, or that the silicon in the silanes is, in fact, tetracovalent, we prefer the latter conclusion. Chirality 10:180–189, 1998.