Chemists achieve stable beryllium bond after 50-year quest

Researchers at the University of Oxford have successfully isolated the first stable compound with a beryllium-beryllium bond, diberyllocene, using a dimeric magnesium(I) complex. The synthesis of diberyllocene will help answer questions about the fundamental nature of beryllium-beryllium bonding that were posed over a century ago. The compound features two half-sandwich (cyclopentadienyl)beryllium units linked through a beryllium-beryllium bond, which was found to be 2.05Å in length. The researchers also concluded that diberyllocene was a reductant that could be used to synthesise other beryllium-metal bonds.