The octahydrotriborate anion, B3H8–, is a topic of recent research due to its high hydrogen content derivatives, such as NH3B3H7 and NH4B3H8, are considered as potential chemical hydrogen storage materials. Although the preparation of the alkali salts of octahydrotriborate can be dated back to Stock’s work in the 1920s, its synthetic methods has been continually improved in the past century. The improvement of the synthetic methods has been mainly focused on using other boranes to replace the flammable and toxic diborane or dispersing alkali metal on other media, instead of using alkali metal amalgam, which poses health and safety issues. In this presentation, we report a direct reaction between potassium metal and THFBH3 solution to produce potassium octahydrotriborate salt with quantitative yield. We slao reported here the mutual conversion between two types of potential hydrogen staorage materials, octahydrotriborate salts (B3H8–) and triborane complexes (LB3H7).

Synthesis and reactivity of potassium octahydrotriborate salt

255th National Meeting (2018)

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