The deprotonation of 1-phenyl-3,4-dimethylphosphole sulfide by a bulky base, followed by the reaction of S 2 Cl 2 , unexpectedly yields a phosphole-annulated 1,2-dithiole-3-thione. The complexation of this product by [W(CO) 5 ] takes place at CdS as expected on the basis of theoretical calculations. Another product results from the unprecedented replacement of the P(S)Ph unit by sulfur, giving the corresponding thiophene derivative.The easily accessible 3H-1,2-dithiole-3-thiones 1 display an interesting redox chemistry, can serve as ligands for transition metals, and have a lot of interesting biological properties. It would be quite interesting to combine this structure with a modulating phosphino group, but, to the best of our knowledge, no phosphino-substituted dithiolethione has ever been described in the literature until now. We describe herein how we found an original phosphole-annulated dithiolethione while trying to link two phosphole units by a sulfur bridge.Our starting point was the delocalized anion obtained by deprotonation of 1-phenyl-3,4-dimethylphosphole sulfide (1) by a bulky base (here the sodium hexamethyldisilazide). 2 We investigated the reaction of this anion with disulfur dichloride with the aim of creating a S-S link between two phosphole units. In fact, we obtained a complicated mixture of products, among which a readily eluted deep red compound (2) was especially noteworthy (eq 1).The formula of 2 was established as follows. The measured mass, m/z 312.9398 (MH þ ), was very close to the computed mass for C 12 H 10 PS 4 (312.9403). The proton NMR spectrum showed only one olefinic R-proton at δ 6.19 ppm ( 2 J H-P = 32.24 Hz) and one methyl at δ 2.61 ppm (CD 2 Cl 2 ). The most prominent feature of the 13 C NMR spectrum was a CdS doublet at δ 209.61 ppm (J C-P = 16.5 Hz). Classical dithiolethiones show a CdS resonance in the range 206-216 ppm. 1 The characterization of 2 was completed by the X-ray crystal structure analysis of the complex (see later). In order to have a more precise understanding of the electronic structure of 2, we performed a DFT calculation on the model compound 3 at the B3LYP/6-311þG(d,p) level. 3 The computed structure is very close to the experimental structure of the complex. The HOMO (Figure 1) is essentially localized on the dithiolethione ring with no participation of phosphorus. The coefficient at the CdS sulfur is huge, indicating that it will be the reactive site toward electrophiles, as is the case for normal dithiolethiones. The participation of the phosphole ring is more significant in the LUMO. At -5.1, the NICS(1) index 4 indicates that the sulfur ring is only weakly aromatic.The UV/vis spectrum of 2 ( Figure 2) shows a characteristic band at 483 nm (ε 8339). In the parent dithiolethione, this band occurs at 410 nm (ε 6400) and corresponds to a π*rπ Figure 1. HOMO and LUMO of compound 3 as computed at the B3LYP/6-311þG(d,p) level. (3) Frisch, M. J.; Trucks, G. W.; Schlegel, H. B.; Scuseria, G. E.; Robb, M. A.; Cheeseman, J. R.; Montgomery, J. A., Jr.; Vr...