Carbyne equivalents fire up carbon–carbon bond formation

Chemists planning to synthesise organic molecules may want to go back to their drawing boards, because a team in Spain has developed a new way to form carbon–carbon bonds. Marcos Suero’s team from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Tarragona, Spain has exploited diazomethyl reagents equivalent to carbynes, carbon atoms with three non-bonded electrons.