Collective bonding continues to divide opinion

By Hugh Ryan2024-02-14T10:49:00

Source: © Cina Foroutan-Nejad/Polish Academy of Sciences

New research supports counterintuitive explanation, but debate is far from settled

When chemists first synthesised NaBH₃⁻ back in 2019, initial research suggested a dative bond connected its sodium monoanion with a borane Lewis acid. Theoretical chemists, however, quickly established that the bonding was not that simple.