Activation of carbon disulfide by a hypersilyl germylene.

In this work, the insertion of CS 2 into the Ge-Si bond of PhC(N t Bu) 2 Ge-Si(SiMe 3 ) 3 (1) has been investigated, resulting in the formation of PhC(N t Bu) 2 Ge-C(S)-S-Si(SiMe 3 ) 3 (2). Interestingly, the addition of NHC to 2 allows the release of NHC·CS 2 with concomitant regeneration of 1. Addition of another equivalent of 1 or an analogous hypersilyl silylene, [PhC(N t Bu) 2 Si-Si(SiMe 3 ) 3 ], to 2 led to the formation of compounds with a GeS (3) or a SiS (4) bond.