Chemical Tricks To Stabilize Silanones and Their Heavier Homologues with EO Bonds (E=Si–Pb): From Elusive Species to Isolable Building Blocks

In contrast to the well‐established chemistry of ketones (R₂C?O), the reactivity of the elusive heavier congeners R₂E?O (E=Si, Ge, Sn, Pb) is far less explored because of the high polarity of the E?O bonds and hence their tendency to oligomerize with no activation barrier. Very recently, great advances have been achieved in the synthesis of isolable compounds with E?O bonds, including the investigation of donor‐stabilized isolable silanones and the first stable “genuine” germanone. These compounds show drastically different reactivities compared to ketones and represent versatile building blocks in silicon–oxygen and germanium–oxygen chemistry. This and other exciting achievements are described in this Minireview.