Superbase Route to Supertetrahedral Chalcogenide Clusters

Supertetrahedral Tn clusters are exact
fragments
of a cubic ZnS type lattice. Thus far, Tn clusters
up to T4 with 20 metal sites can be synthesized in a discrete molecular
form. Yet, synthesis of larger discrete supertetrahedral clusters
still remains a great challenge, likely due to the rapidly increasing
negative charge on the cluster as the size goes up. By using organic
superbases (DBN and DBU) to help stabilize the negative charge, a
family of discrete supertetrahedral chalcogenide clusters with sizes
spanning from T3 (10 metal sites) to T5 (35 metal sites) have been
made. The T5 cluster represents the largest molecular supertetrahedral
Tn cluster known to date.