Unusual Reactivity of Silicon Grease Towards Metal Alkoxides: Serendipity for Structural Chemistry

Controlled synthesis of moisture sensitive metal alkoxides demands the use of silicon grease for the inert synthetic manipulation of starting materials using glass apparatus to avoid adventitious hydrolysis. Spontaneous reaction of the siloxane units (-OSi(Me-3)(2))(n)) with the synthesized alkoxides often leads to molecular metal alkoxides based siloxane frameworks. These spontaneous incorporation of siloxane units into homo- and heterometallic alkoxide building blocks lead to the new multinuclear homo- and heterometallic alkoxide-siloxide compounds [Ce-2(OtBu)(4){Me2Si(OtBu)O}(2)(NO3)(2)] (1), [Zr{(OiPr)(2){Me2SiO2}Sr{Zr-2(OiPr)(8)}}(2)] (2) and [Sn2In2O2{Me2Si(OiPr)O}(OiPr)(5)](2) (3). Multifunctional coordination properties of these siloxane units enable the molecular approach to synthetically demanding polymetallic complexes for potential MOx-SiOx nanocomposites fabrication