Redox reactions (or electron-transfer reactions) are one of the most fundamental type of chemical reactions and of enormous importance for the synthesis of chemical compounds. By transferring one or more electrons to an oxidant, the electronic configuration as well as the molecular structure change. The latter can be detected with single crystal X-ray diffraction. This provides valuable insight into fundamental questions of structure and chemical bonding.
In this thesis, reactions between very powerful oxidants and perfluorinated boron clusters, permethylated metallocenes and hexamethylbenzene were investigated. It was necessary to use inorganic solvents as anhydrous HF or liquid sulfur dioxide whose handling is generally considered to be very difficult.
In this thesis, it was surprisingly shown that using „brutal“ oxidizing conditions and superacids as solvents, metallocenes (also known as sandwich complexes) could be selectively oxidized to dications.
Additionally, the hexamethylbenzene dication C6(CH3)62+ was structurally characterized. In contrast to many compounds containing benzene rings (flat six-membered ring) the hexamethylbenzene dication has a pentagonal-pyramidal shape and contains a hexacoordinated carbon atom.