Dimethylcadmium is the
organocadmium compound with the formula Cd(CH
3)
2. It is a colorless highly toxic liquid that fumes in air. It is a linear molecule with C-Cd bond lengths of 213 pm. The compound finds limited use as a reagent in
organic synthesis
Organic synthesis is a special branch of chemical synthesis and is concerned with the intentional construction of organic compounds. Organic molecules are often more complex than inorganic compounds, and their synthesis has developed into one o ...
and in
metalorganic chemical vapor deposition
Metalorganic vapour-phase epitaxy (MOVPE), also known as organometallic vapour-phase epitaxy (OMVPE) or metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), is a chemical vapour deposition method used to produce single- or polycrystalline thin films. ...
(MOCVD). It has also been used in the synthesis of
cadmium selenide nanoparticles, although efforts have been made to replace it in this capacity due to its toxicity.
Dimethylcadmium is prepared by treating cadmium dihalides with methyl
Grignard reagents or
methyllithium.
:CdBr
2 + 2 CH
3MgBr → Cd(CH
3)
2 + 2 MgBr
2
The same method was used in the first preparation of this compound.
Dimethylcadmium is a weak
Lewis acid
A Lewis acid (named for the American physical chemist Gilbert N. Lewis) is a chemical species that contains an empty orbital which is capable of accepting an electron pair from a Lewis base to form a Lewis adduct. A Lewis base, then, is any sp ...
, forming a labile adduct with
diethyl ether
Diethyl ether, or simply ether, is an organic compound in the ether class with the formula , sometimes abbreviated as (see Pseudoelement symbols). It is a colourless, highly volatile, sweet-smelling ("ethereal odour"), extremely flammable liq ...
. A yellow, air-senstive adduct is formed with
2,2'-bipyridine
The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
.
[
]
References
{{authority control
Cadmium compounds
Neurotoxins
Foul-smelling chemicals
Methyl complexes
Substances discovered in the 1910s