Abstract
Addition of triethyl borate to disodium diselenide or to sodium decyl diselenolate allows their reduction with sodium borohydride which otherwise does not take place.
Key words
selenium - reduction - sodium borohydride
References
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6 During the course of this work we observed that triethyl borate is produced besides didecyl selenide on sequential reaction of elemental selenium, sodium borohydride, ethanol and decyl bromide (Equation
[1 ]
, entry a). It has been distilled, in quantitative yield, from the crude mixture and compared to an authentic sample purchased from the Sigma Aldrich Company. It was nevertheless impossible to distill it out of the medium before addition of decyl bromide although it was easy to remove the solvent (heating up to 120 °C) from the reaction mixture.