The Braunschweig Group


Research in the Braunschweig group covers a wide range of organometallic and main group element chemistry. Motivation for our work arises from the fundamental interest in novel molecular species, and much emphasis lies with the elucidation of their detailed electronic structure and reactivity patterns, thus disclosing potential applications in organic synthesis, catalysis, or materials science. Commonly, sophisticated synthetic protocols, as well as state-of-the-art analytical and computational methods are applied to meet these goals. Significant achievements over the past decades were made in various independent, highly topical and competitive sub-areas of (i) organometallic chemistry such as metal boron complexes (borane, boryl, borylene, boride, oxoboryl), metallo-arenophanes, or metal-only Lewis pairs, and (ii) main group element chemistry such as novel boron heterocycles (boroles, azaborinines, etc.) and boron boron multiple bonded species (diborenes, diborynes).



The homepage for our newly-established research institute - the Institute for Sustainable Chemistry & Catalysis with Boron (ICB) is now online. 

Visit the ICB homepage.



Selected Recent Publications

  • M.-A. Légaré, G. Bélanger-Chabot, R. D. Dewhurst, E. Welz, I. Krummenacher, B. Engels, H. Braunschweig
    Nitrogen fixation and reduction at boron
    Science 2018, 359, 896–900. [pdf]
  • H. Braunschweig, R. D. Dewhurst, J. O. C. Jiménez-Halla, E. Matito, J. H. Müssig
    Transition Metal π-Ligation of a Tetrahalodiborane
    Angew. Chem. 2018, 130, 419–423; [pdf] Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2018, 57, 412–416. [pdf]
  • J. Böhnke, H. Braunschweig, J. O. C. Jiménez-Halla, I. Krummenacher, T. E. Stennett
    Half-Sandwich Complexes of an Extremely Electron-Donating, Redox-Active η6-Diborabenzene Ligand
    J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018, 140, 848–853. [pdf]
  • D. Auerhammer, M. Arrowsmith, J. Böhnke, H. Braunschweig, T. Kupfer 

    Closely related yet different: a borylene and its dimer are non-interconvertible but connected through reactivity
    Chem. Sci. 2018, 9, 2252–2260. [pdf]

  • A. Hofmann, A. Lamprecht, O. F. González-Belman, R. D. Dewhurst, J. O. C. Jiménez-Halla, S. Kachel, H. Braunschweig 
    Dialumination of unsaturated species with a reactive bis(cyclopentadienyl) dialane
    Chem. Commun. 2018, 54, 1639–1642. [pdf]