Prof. Dr. Aleš Růžička

Prof. Dr. Aleš Růžička, Ph.D., is employed at the Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry, the Faculty of Chemical Technology of the University of Pardubice. From the beginning of his studies he was a member of the research group of Prof. J. Holeček (since 1993). Since 1999 he has been employed as a researcher. In 2001, he completed his doctoral studies and began an independent scientific career. In 2003, he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at the Royal Society/NATO fellowship with Prof. Michael F. Lappert at Sussex University in Brighton, UK. In the following years he made short-term stays and lectured at foreign universities. In 2005 he became Associate Professor and in 2011 he was appointed Professor in Inorganic Chemistry.

He is a member of the editorial boards of Applied Organometallic Chemistry, Main Group Metal Chemistry, Journal of Organometallic Chemistry and Crystals, Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry, Chairman and member of several subject advisory and scientific boards and member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic.

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Abstract

In the hundred-year-history of boron hydrides and their successors (polyhedral boranes, carboranes and other heteroboranes) and derivatives, the number, molecular shape, reactivity and applications of these species have become enormous, thus establishing a self-consistent field of chemistry. Areas of possible applications of these species ranging from energy/hydrogen storage, synthetic organic chemistry, catalysis and medicine to preparation of new materials. Polyhedral boranes and hereroboranes appear almost exclusively as neutral or anionic species, while the cationic ones are protonated at exoskeletal heteroatoms or they are instable. Taking these considerations into account, one could expect that the addition of a strong σ-donor such as NHCs would increase the electron density on those traditionally taken electron-deficient skeletons and stabilize them like in the many cases of low-valent or cationic main-group elements.

Surprisingly enough, the addition of strong sigma-donors to various (hetero)boranes dramatically exchange its structure and reactivity.

Ways (A[1], B[2], C[3] and D[4]) to cationic heteroboranes.

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