Recent chemistry of the silicon-silicon double bond

Abstract Disilenes, compounds containing silicon-silicon bonds, were first synthesized in 1981: When the first organosilicon compounds were synthesized in the 1860’s, multiple bonds were already well known in carbon chemistry. The first attempts to make multiply-bonded silicon compounds were reported as early as 1869. But these efforts, and all others, were unsuccessful for more than a century, and the belief gradually arose that multiple bonds to silicon would be impossible to form.