The lasting reach of William Lipscomb’s borane research

Chemistry World reports that Lipscomb and his colleagues used low-temperature X-ray crystallography in the 1950s to study boranes. Their work showed how two electrons could be shared among three atoms, helping explain the compounds’ unusual shapes and dipole moments. The article follows the influence of that work through research on borophene, porous frameworks for gas separation and boron-containing compounds being studied to counter antibiotic resistance.