Stable Organic Neutral Diradical via Reversible Coordination

We
report the formation of a stable neutral diboron diradical simply
by coordination of an aromatic dinitrogen compound to an ortho-phenyldiborane. This process is reversible upon addition of pyridine.
The diradical species is stable above 200 °C. Computations are
consistent with an open-shell triplet diradical with a very small
open-shell singlet–triplet energy gap that is indicative of
the electronic disjointness of the two radical sites. This opens a
new way of generating stable radicals with fascinating electronic
properties useful for a large variety of applications.