The maximum coordination number of the central atom in planar molecules generated by now in mole-cular beams was 8. We made
use of the chemical bond model developed for planar boron clusters to check the possibility of existence of planar molecules
with the coordination numbers 9 and 10. The objects of or study were the AlB
9 and AlB
10+ clusters which have local minima corresponding to highly symmetrical
D
9h
and
D
10h
structures, respectively. According to our calculations, the highly symmetrical structure of AlB
9 is a global minimum or a low-lying isomer, and, therefore, it holds promise as a new ligand for coordination chemistry. The
energy of the highly symmetrical structure of AlB
10+ with the coordination number 10 is too high, and this structure is hardly synthetically feasible. Thus, 9 is presently the
maximum coordination number of an atom in a planar molecule.
Original Russian Text © B.B. Averkiev, A.I. Boldyrev, 2007, published in Rossiiskii Khimicheskii Zhurnal, 2007, Vol. 51, No.
5, pp. 87–90.