Chemoctopus has superlative redox powers

An octasilsesquioxane grafted with redox-active metallacarborane arms—we’ll call it a chemoctopus—could prove to be a versatile material for a host of sensing, catalytic, and biomedical applications (Inorg. Chem. 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b02394). Octasilsesquioxanes are intriguing Si₈O₁₂ cubes that are favorites of materials researchers because they are easy to make. The cagey framework ensures mechanical and thermal stability, and the easily functionalized silicon atoms give rise to tunable properties. Researchers have previously prepared electroactive metallodendrimers by attaching ferrocene units to silsesquioxane cores. But these compounds haven’t always been soluble in common solvents or exhibited uniform redox activity. In the new example, a team led by Rosario Núñez of the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona grafted metallacarboranes to the silicon atoms of octavinylsilsesquioxane via olefin metathesis. The resulting octopus-like molecules exhibit high solubility in organic solvents, the researchers note, but in addition their electrochemical studies show that the pendant metallacarboranes act as independent, one-electron redox units that can transfer eight electrons at essentially the same potential. Developing such molecules that can uniformly store and transfer many electrons is an ongoing challenge in developing molecule-based electronics.

CORRECTION: On Dec. 5, 2016, this story was updated to correct the silsesquioxane formula. It should be Si₈O₁₂ rather than Si₈O₈ as originally stated.