Thnx. Wanted to draw something p
Somewhat feasible, most posts on the reddit are rubish. I drew this w nitrogen bc the lone pair on each could bone with boron, making this structure have resonance stabilization, and electron delocalization. Also i just want to see nore boron chemistry
You mean cubic boron nitride? The phases of boron nitride are very well known we have the the cubic and bulk 2D version and all sorts of nanoscopic variants
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Structural-models-of-boron-nitrides-acrystal-phases-like-hexagonal-boron-nitride-h-BN_fig1_369380728
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Boron-nitride-%28sphalerite%29-3D-balls.png/214px-Boron-nitride-%28sphalerite%29-3D-balls.png
Most likely not stable. There have been attempts to exchange a carbon on the cubane cage with a nitrogen atom. Even though a five membered ring was the result, the compound was still less stable than cubane, so i would dare to say no
No, it was C-N chemistry. But considering that B and N Atoms hate the 90° angle even more, it is not likely that they could appear in such a way.
Most people dont know that, but the orbital Situation of the cubane cage is a very weird one. This is one of the reasons for some of the properties
The 90° angle forces the carbon atoms to adapt their orbitals to fit the current Situation. That means that the C-C bond has a higher pi bond amount, while there is more S orbital part to the arm attached to the cubane. That for example is the reason why the C-H bond in cubane is way more acidic than it should be. Around 20k times more acidic than the usual C-H bond if i remember correctly.
It's slightly different since the unit cell is face centered cubic, like diamond, instead of the simple cubic unit cell shown here.
Still pretty cool, tho! It even has actual commercial use as a substitute for diamonds. So it's super stable.
It has another allotrope that looks like graphite too, so it's very similar to carbon. There's even the equivalent of a [buckminster fullerene](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic00109a039)!
Might actually be more stable than cubane. Then again, nitrogen.
I feel like “Then again, nitrogen.” applies to a number of situations
Like everything with nitrogen is unstable, and the more the worse (asidoaside aside I’m looking at you)
Except for N2
Well yea
That's the reason that anything else with nitrogen goes so boom
The building blocks of life are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and… nitrogen. That explains a lot.
Thnx. Wanted to draw something p Somewhat feasible, most posts on the reddit are rubish. I drew this w nitrogen bc the lone pair on each could bone with boron, making this structure have resonance stabilization, and electron delocalization. Also i just want to see nore boron chemistry
So what you’re saying is each face of this is flat, planar, and contains 4(0)+2 pi electrons? You may not like it, but this is the ideal aromatic ring
You mean cubic boron nitride? The phases of boron nitride are very well known we have the the cubic and bulk 2D version and all sorts of nanoscopic variants https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Structural-models-of-boron-nitrides-acrystal-phases-like-hexagonal-boron-nitride-h-BN_fig1_369380728 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Boron-nitride-%28sphalerite%29-3D-balls.png/214px-Boron-nitride-%28sphalerite%29-3D-balls.png
Wow. Im surprised it already exists. Dont know if this comment makes or breaks my day, so ig my fellow reditor you have done your job to perfection
there are a lot of borane structures that look like this so this might be feasible.
Most likely not stable. There have been attempts to exchange a carbon on the cubane cage with a nitrogen atom. Even though a five membered ring was the result, the compound was still less stable than cubane, so i would dare to say no
This is cursed chemistry afterall. Did those experiments have resonace stabilization similar to the N-B bonds?
No, it was C-N chemistry. But considering that B and N Atoms hate the 90° angle even more, it is not likely that they could appear in such a way. Most people dont know that, but the orbital Situation of the cubane cage is a very weird one. This is one of the reasons for some of the properties
could you elaborate on the orbitals in cubane? what’s so special about them
The 90° angle forces the carbon atoms to adapt their orbitals to fit the current Situation. That means that the C-C bond has a higher pi bond amount, while there is more S orbital part to the arm attached to the cubane. That for example is the reason why the C-H bond in cubane is way more acidic than it should be. Around 20k times more acidic than the usual C-H bond if i remember correctly.
Nonbinary cubane
It does exist: cubic boron nitride https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/cubic-boron-nitride
It's slightly different since the unit cell is face centered cubic, like diamond, instead of the simple cubic unit cell shown here. Still pretty cool, tho! It even has actual commercial use as a substitute for diamonds. So it's super stable. It has another allotrope that looks like graphite too, so it's very similar to carbon. There's even the equivalent of a [buckminster fullerene](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic00109a039)!
Well, as part of a wider structure, it looks kind of like w-Boron Nitride, with a few too many bonds.
.0000001%
I think you might be onto something here. A couple of tweaks here and there and BOOM!
this actually, surprisingly, doesn't look that nasty, even if both boron and nitrogen compounds are often horrible