Neutral and cationic trimethylsilylmethyl complexes of indium

The trimethylsilylmethyl indium complex [In(CH2-SiMe3)(3)] (1) was studied by single-crystal X-ray structure analysis at low temperature and shown to be weakly associated as dimeric units with a long indium-carbon bond in the bridges. The bis(trimethylsilylmethyl) cation [In(CH2SiMe3)(2)(THF)(3)][B(C6F5)(4)] (2) was prepared by protonolysis of the neutral complex [In(CH2SiMe3)(3)] with [NPhMe2H][B(C6F5)(4)] in THE Crystal structure analysis revealed that mononuclear 2 adopts a square-pyramidal geometry.