Chemspy chemistry news and views

Borosulfate breaks through - Henning Höppe, together with a team from the University of Augsburg and Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg in Germany, have created potassium borosulfate - K5[B(SO4)4] - by heating potassium sulfate with boric and sulfuric acids. The compound they created comprises a boron atom linked through four oxygen atoms to four sulfate groups and carries a formal 5- charge. Reference: H A Höppe et al, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2012, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201109237