For the first time, a general method for catalyst-free and solvent-free hydroboration of various aldehydes has been developed.

Silicon and its compounds with other heteroatoms have received considerable attention, particularly because of their applicative ability. Silicon forms a large number of compounds with other p‐block elements (e.g., C, N, S, O, F, Cl, and others). All of them affect practical chemistry to some extent and are characterized by unique properties. This article highlights recent developments and covers the literature from the last 10 years. It is mainly focused on catalytic methods for silicon–nitrogen, silicon–phosphorus, silicon–oxygen, and silicon–sulfur bond formation. The scope and applications of these practical compounds will also be discussed.

Hydroelementation enables a facile reduction or functionalization of several unsaturated systems, and thus activation of such bonds like B–H and Si–H is a powerful synthetic tool.

Silsesquioxanes (POSS) have recently become the subject of growing interest in many branches of materials chemistry. Despite this great interest, no direct metal-catalyzed method to cap the corner of the POSS molecules has yet been proposed. In this report, we present a highly efficient method for the synthesis of functionalized silsesquioxanes mediated by scandium(III) triflate, which opens up the possibility of introducing a wide variety of functional groups into this class of organosilicon compounds under mild conditions with excellent yields. We also investigated the differences in the activity of the Lewis acid (Sc(OTf)) and the hidden Brønsted acid (TfOH) generated in situ from triflates as catalysts in the functionalization of silsesquioxanes. What is more, this solution provides an efficient corner-capping reaction and other functionalizations to obtain silsesquioxane derivatives which are often not possible to synthesize with good yields, efficiency, and chemoselectivity using conventional methods.