Catalytic dehydrogenative coupling of diorganotindihydrides by lanthanide diamide complexes

Despite the fact that sterically demanding 1,2-dihydrodistannanes are versatile synthons, their synthesis is typically a tedious, low-yield procedure, which limits synthetic applications. Looking for generally applicable and high-yield routes, we examined the dehydrogenative coupling of sterically crowded diorganotindihydrides. Herein, we report the application of lanthanide diamide-based catalysts (CH2)(3)-1,3-[N(Dipp)](2)LnBr (Ln=La,Ce,Nd,Dy) to generate polystannanes and distannanes, depending on the size of the aromatic substituents. Reaction of (Bu2SnH2)-Bu-t resulted in the quantitative formation of 1,1,2,2-tetra-tert-butyldistannane while conversion of sterically encumbered Mes(2)SnH(2) yielded 1,1,2,2-tetramesityldistannane. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.