Diethylsilanediol, C4H12O2Si, a redetermination

Dimethylsilanediol from silicone elastomers: Analysis, release from biopharmaceutical process equipment, and clearance studies

Polysiloxanes are considered one of the most important commercial families of synthetic elastomers. They are frequently employed in biopharmaceutical manufacturing equipment as flexible single-use solutions due to superior material properties and compatibility with diverse sterilization methods. Extractables and leachables (E&L) testing is essential in qualifying such equipment, involving extraction studies to assess the potential release of compounds from plastic components for risk assessment. Silicone releases oligomeric siloxanes and small hydrolysis products, with dimethylsilanediol (DMSD) being the main hydrolysis product found in significant concentrations in aqueous process solutions. DMSD presents challenges for analysis, requiring specifically tailored analytical methods to detect it, which are commonly not applied in standard E&L screening tests. In biopharmaceutical manufacturing, it is relevant to consider the potential of DMSD to repolymerize into silicone oil when specific process parameters are altered. This may lead to interactions with drug ingredients, including proteins, resulting in the formation of aggregates. We synthesized and characterized DMSD using X-ray structure analysis and established an HPLC method with a refractive index detector to investigate the release of DMSD from commercially available silicone tubing used in drug manufacturing following autoclaving and irradiation. Subsequently, we assessed typical biopharmaceutical downstream operations for effectively removing this compound from the process stream.

Diastereoselective oxidative carbon-carbon bond formation via silyl bis-enol ethers

Diisopropylsilyl bis-enol ethers are shown to be powerful intermediates for the diastereoselective dimerization and cross-coupling of cyclic ketones. The trends observed for the oxidative coupling of a range of different dialkylsilyl bis-enol ethers derived from cyclohexanone are rationalized by invoking a stereochemical model based on a Thorpe-Ingold effect.

Silsesquioxane models for geminal silica surface silanol sites. A spectroscopic investigation of different types of silanols

The incompletely condensed monosilylated silsesquioxanes (c-C5H9)7Si7O9(OSiRR'2)(OH)2 (SiRR'2 = SiMe3, SiMe2C(H)CH2, SiMePh2) were reacted with SiCl(4) in the presence of an amine which yielded the dichloro compounds (c-C5H9)7Si7O9(OSiRR'2)O2SiCl2 (1-3). These compounds could be hydrolyzed into the corresponding silsesquioxanes containing geminal silanols, (c-C5H9)7Si7O9(OSiRR'2)O2Si(OH)2 (4-6). At elevated temperatures, the geminal silsesquioxanes 4 and 5 undergo condensation reactions and form the closed-cage silsesquioxane monosilanol, (c-C5H9)7Si8O12(OH). The more sterically hindered geminal silsesquioxane 6 undergoes in solution intermolecular dehydroxylation, yielding the thermodynamically stable dimeric disilanol, [(c-C5H9)7Si7O9(OSiMePh2)(O2Si(OH)-)]2-(mu-O) (7). NMR and FT-IR studies show that the two silanols of the geminal silsesquioxanes 4-6 are different from each other with respect to hydrogen bonding, both in solution and in the solid state. Hydrogen bonding of the geminal silanol-containing silsesquioxanes was examined and compared to hydrogen bonding in silsesquioxanes possessing vicinal or isolated silanol groups. The relative Brønsted acidity of the geminal silanols was determined using pK(ip) (ion-pair acidity) measurements in THF with UV-vis. These acidities were compared with those of other silsesquioxanes containing silanol groups. Acidities of 4-6 were found to be among the lowest known for silsesquioxanes.