Merle Arrowsmith, Holger Braunschweig, Mehmet Ali Celik, Theresa Dellermann, Rian D. Dewhurst, William C. Ewing, Kai Hammond, Thomas Kramer, Ivo Krummenacher, Jan Mies, Krzysztof Radacki, Julia K. Schuster
Abstract
The metals of the s block of the periodic table are well known to be exceptional electron donors, and the vast majority of their molecular complexes therefore contain these metals in their fully oxidized form. Low-valent main-group compounds have recently become desirable synthetic targets owing to their interesting reactivities, sometimes on a par with those of transition-metal complexes. In this work, we used stabilizing cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene ligands to isolate and characterize the first neutral compounds that contain a zero-valent s-block metal, beryllium. These brightly coloured complexes display very short beryllium-carbon bond lengths and linear beryllium coordination geometries, indicative of strong multiple Be-C bonding. Structural, spectroscopic and theoretical results show that the complexes adopt a closed-shell singlet configuration with a Be(0) metal centre. The surprising stability of the molecule can be ascribed to an unusually strong three-centre two-electron π bond across the C-Be-C unit.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 181. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 February 2026.
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#268,005
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#2
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Altmetric has tracked 32,441,370 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,938 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 34.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 83 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
