Département de chimie moléculaire

We report a peculiar Stenhouse salt. It does not evolve into cyclopentenones upon basification{,} due to the steric hindrance of its bulky stable carbene patterns. This allowed for the observation and characterization of the transient open-chain neutral derivative{,} which was isolated as its cyclized form. The latter features an unusually long reactive C–O bond (150 pm) and a rich electrochemistry{,} including oxidation into an air-persistent radical cation.