Borane

A borane is an inorganic chemical compound of boron and hydrogen. The lighter boranes are notably unstable - diborane ignites in air to burn with a green flame - but higher ones are much less so. Decaborane is stable and crystalline, reacting with neither air nor water.

History

German chemist Alfred Stock was the first scientist to characterize the series of boron-hydrogen compounds by analogy with hydrocarbons. The boranes remained a laboratory curiosity until World War Two, where there was some interest in using uranium borohydride as a volatile uranium compound for isotope separation. Dr Herbert C. Brown, Nobel prize winner in 1979, started working on boranes at the University of Chicago in 1942 under the auspices of this project, and never really stopped.

Related Topics:
German - Chemist - Alfred Stock - Hydrocarbons - Uranium borohydride - Herbert C. Brown - Nobel prize

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Borane-based reagants are now widely used in organic synthesis; sodium borohydride is the standard reactant for converting aldehydes and ketones to alcohols.

Related Topics:
Sodium borohydride - Aldehyde - Ketone

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The US and USSR both spent very substantial amounts in the fifties and early sixties researching boron-based high-energy fuels (ethylboranes, for example) for very fast aircraft such as the XB-70 Valkyrie. The development of advanced surface-to-air missiles made the fast aircraft redundant, and the fuel programs were shut down: boranes were used to light the engines of the SR-71 Blackbird high-speed plane.

Related Topics:
XB-70 Valkyrie - SR-71 Blackbird

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