Formation of direct metal-metal bonds from 16-electron "pseudo-aromatic" half-sandwich complexes Cp'M[E2C2(B10H10)

Continuous study on preparation of multimetallic clusters is stimulated by their rich coordination chemistry and promising applications in a variety of interesting fields. Although numerous efforts have been devoted to this field, the rational design of homo- and hetero-multimetallic compounds with direct metal-metal bonding supported by 1,2-dicarba-closo-dodecarborane-1,2-dichalcogenolates will still be an important step forward. This tutorial review focuses on the synthetic approach via redox reactions between the pseudo-aromatic half-sandwich oraganometallic carborane precursors and low-valent transition metal reagents. The tailoring of reaction conditions and the structural information from the resulting products are discussed extensively.