Chemists just broke a 100-year-old rule and say it’s time to rewrite the textbooks

Phys.org  October 31, 204 One hundred years ago, Julius Bredt published an observation that certain molecules that constrained several adjacent carbon centers in a particular nonplanar arrangement could not form double bonds between them. These hypothetical double bonds became known as “anti-Bredt” olefins, and the doctrine that they were inaccessible remains widespread even with the occasional hint to the contrary. Researchers at UCLA reported a general strategy to prepare these olefins as fleeting intermediates that could be captured in cycloaddition reactions. The protocol relies on the driving force of silicon-fluorine bond formation from a precursor, which is akin to approaches […]