Boric acid, B(OH)3, is progenitorial to a wide range of industrially important boron compounds. Recent work in our group utilizes reactions of boric acid with simple metal oxides and non-metal bases under mild aqueous conditions to form complex polyborate structures, where self-assembly of polyborate anions is largely directed by cations in these systems. One goal of this work is to provide a more detailed understanding of cation control of polyborate assembly and to exploit this effect in practical syntheses of useful materials. This paper focuses on borate compounds of empirical type MB3O5�xH2O (M2O�3B2O3�xH2O), which may contain fundamental building blocks having three, six, nine or more boron atoms in isolated or condensed form. Of particular note is the hexaborate anion, B6O7(OH)62- (a  ), which may act as a bi- or tridentate ligand toward metal centers (b ).

Polyborate assembly directed by metal and nonmetal cations

247th National Meeting (2014)

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