When flat, tri-coordinate boron is treated in an appropriate manner, it rears its had, becomes tetra-coordinate and chiral, and forms enantiomers. The configurational stability of such boron complexes had been studied by Dr. Sebastian Schlecht and Dr. Marco Engelmann at HHU in collaboration with Professor Walter Frank (HHU) and Professor Stefan Grimme (at the time University of Münster). Only since recently, boron-stereogenic complexes are accessible by catalytic asymmetric syntheses. What makes this particularly exciting is that tetra-coordinate boron compounds are considered promising light-emitting materials.
Manfred Braun, Boron-Based Enantiomerism, Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2024, e202400052