Mechanochemical Activation of Strontium for the Selective Cross-Coupling of Chlorosilanes
- 1Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD)
- 2Faculty of Engineering
- 3Division of Applied Chemistry
Abstract
Silicon-containing compounds are important in both academic and industrial settings, and the reductive coupling of chlorosilanes is a widely used approach for the formation of Si–Si bonds. However, despite its long history, this strategy for the formation of Si–Si bonds has remained largely limited to homocoupling, while a general synthetic method for selective heterocoupling has yet to be established. Previous strategies have relied on the stepwise generation of silicon nucleophiles or electrochemical methods. Here, we demonstrate that mechanochemical activation of strontium metal by ball milling enables the one-pot, cross-selective coupling of a broad range of chlorosilane pairs. Notably, after screening group 1 and group 2 metals, strontium was found to exhibit higher reactivity under mechanochemical conditions than commonly used metal reductants such as lithium and sodium. Importantly, no reaction occurs when strontium is employed under conventional solution conditions, highlighting the crucial role that mechanical activation plays in the reaction. Finally, this method is also applicable to the cross-coupling of chlorosilanes with chlorogermanes, thus establishing a practical and operationally simple protocol for the formation of E–E (E = Si, Ge) bonds.
Related
- Mechanical State Selection in Mechanochemical Bond Activation.
- Modulating the Electronic Structure and Basal-Plane Adsorption of Janus CrSSe through Mechanochemical Activation
- Affinity Chromatography With Selective Nucleic Acid Hybridization: Direct Coupling With Size Exclusion Chromatography
- Plasmonic Coupling Within Atomically Precise Nanocluster Dimers for Engineering Hot-Carrier Generation and Molecular Activation
- Selective Mono and Diborylation of Aromatic Pentafluorosulfanyl Compounds by iridium-catalyzed C–H Activation
BibTeX
@misc{kim2026mechanochemical,
title = {{Mechanochemical Activation of Strontium for the Selective Cross-Coupling of Chlorosilanes}},
author = {Hyehwang Kim and Koji Kubota and Hajime Ito},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15009847/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009847/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Mechanochemical Activation of Strontium for the Selective Cross-Coupling of Chlorosilanes
AU - Hyehwang Kim
AU - Koji Kubota
AU - Hajime Ito
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15009847/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009847/v1
AB - Silicon-containing compounds are important in both academic and industrial settings, and the reductive coupling of chlorosilanes is a widely used approach for the formation of Si–Si bonds. However, despite its long history, this strategy for the formation of Si–Si bonds has remained largely limited to homocoupling, while a general synthetic method for selective heterocoupling has yet to be established. Previous strategies have relied on the stepwise generation of silicon nucleophiles or electrochemical methods. Here, we demonstrate that mechanochemical activation of strontium metal by ball milling enables the one-pot, cross-selective coupling of a broad range of chlorosilane pairs. Notably, after screening group 1 and group 2 metals, strontium was found to exhibit higher reactivity under mechanochemical conditions than commonly used metal reductants such as lithium and sodium. Importantly, no reaction occurs when strontium is employed under conventional solution conditions, highlighting the crucial role that mechanical activation plays in the reaction. Finally, this method is also applicable to the cross-coupling of chlorosilanes with chlorogermanes, thus establishing a practical and operationally simple protocol for the formation of E–E (E = Si, Ge) bonds.
ER -