In contrast to carbon and its heavier congeners, group 13 elements are rarely observed to catenate into linear chains. Here, we find that treatment of indium(I) iodide with a protonated N-xylyl beta-diketiminate and a strong potassium base in tetrahydrofuran yields a hexa-indium chain. X-ray crystallography revealed one beta-diketiminate ligand bound to each indium center with no bridging ligands supporting the five indium-indium single bonds. The terminal indium centers were capped with iodine. Electronic spectroscopy and computations on a model compound offer preliminary support for sigma delocalization along the chain.
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Hill et al. (2006) studied this question.
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