Abstract An NMR method using diastereotopic halosilanes, PhCH (Me) SiMe 2 X (X= Cl or Br) has been developed for studying nucleophile-assisted racemisations of halosilanes. A mechanism for racemisation involving halide exchange is proposed to account for the observation that, at low temperatures, the halosilane is undergoing inversion of configuration while the four-coordinate nucleophile-halosilane adduct is stereochemically ...