At the outset of a new project aimed at elucidating the mechanism of the reaction between disilenes and electrophiles using the approach developed for analogous studies of carbon–carbon double bond reactivity, 2 we required a convenient route to our starting materials (eg, 1). Unfortunately, we experienced difficulties in consistently obtaining the desired compound 1 using the known low-temperature photolysis of 2,2-dimesityl-1,1,1,3,3,3-hexametyltrisilane, ...
