Isomerism in the Chemistry of Organogermanium Compounds (Part II)

The organogermanium chemistry covers huge fields, as shown by a survey covering the crystallographic and structural data of over four hundred and fifty examples. Over 10 percent of those compounds exist as distortion isomers (around 97 %) and ligand isomers (around 3 %). These are discussed in term of coordination around the Ge(II), Ge(IV) and Ge2 +3 atoms, and correlations are drawn between donor atoms, bond lengths and bond angles. Distortion isomers differ by degree of distortion in Ge – L distances and L-Ge-L angles. Interestingly, in the chemistry germanium coordination complexes besides configuration isomers, also distortion isomers dominate.