In discussing ferrocene in the previous post, I mentioned Irving Langmuir’s 1921 postulate that filled valence shells in what he called complete molecules would have magic numbers of 2, 8, 18 or 32 electrons (deriving from the sum of terms in 2[1+3+5+7]). The first two dominate organic chemistry of course, whilst the third is illustrated by the transition series, ferrocene being an example of such. The fourth case is very much rarer, only one example ever having been suggested[1], it deriving from the actinides. In this post, I thought I would augment ferrocene (an 18-electron example) with beryllocene (an 8-electron example) and then speculate about 32-electron metallocenes.
References
- J. Dognon, C. Clavaguéra, and P. Pyykkö, "Towards a 32‐Electron Principle: Pu@Pb12 and Related Systems", Angewandte Chemie International Edition, vol. 46, pp. 1427-1430, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200604198