These structures illustrate two examples of aggregation in alkyllithium complexes:
tetrameric methyllithium, and the TMEDA adduct of dimeric phenyllithium.

Note that the thin lines do not represent "normal" 2c2e bonds, but rather some degree of electron-deficient bonding.

Jmol._Canvas2D (Jmol) "MeLi"[x]	Jmol._Canvas2D (Jmol) "PhLi"[x]
[MeLi]4	[PhLi]2•2TMEDA

This page is maintained and copyright by W. Stephen McNeil at UBC Okanagan.
All educational works available on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.
Last updated September 10, 2021