Odd boron compound gets two nitrogen molecules to link up

In the first ever reaction of its kind, chemists have made a chain of four nitrogen atoms by linking up two dinitrogen molecules. While other nitrogen-chain forming reactions require extreme pressure or temperature, this transformation works at close to ambient conditions thanks to a boron mediator molecule. Unlike its periodic table neighbour carbon, nitrogen doesn’t like to form long chains – and if it does, these are unstable at best and highly explosive at worst. Nitrogen is happiest in the form of dinitrogen, which has one of the strongest bonds known to chemists.