A Polish-German research group led by Dr Bartosz Trzaskowski of the Center of New Technologies at the University of Warsaw (UW) and Dr René Franka of the Technical University of Brunswick discovered new chemical compounds containing a boron atom.

The results of this work can be used to obtain completely new classes of compounds that will be used in the synthesis of new drugs or the food industry.

A carbonyl group is a moiety containing a chemical double bond between a carbon and oxygen atom (C = O). It occurs, for example, in acetic acid, formalin, acetone or natural wax. Scientists decided to investigate whether it is possible to obtain stable chemical compounds containing a double chemical bond between the boron and oxygen atoms (B = O) by replacing a carbon atom in a carbonyl group with a boron atom adjacent to it in the periodic table.

New chemical compounds containing analogues of the carbonyl group are very stable. (…) This discovery opens the way to easier synthesis of chemical compounds containing the boron atom, as well as to obtaining completely new classes of chemical compounds that can be used in many branches of chemistry – said Dr Bartosz Trzaskowski.