Trimethylsilanol (TMS) is an organosilicon compound with the formula . The Si centre bears three methyl groups and one hydroxyl group. It is a colourless volatile liquid.Paul D. Lickiss: The Synthesis and Structure of Organosilanols, Advances in Inorganic Chemistry 1995, Volume 42, Pages 147–262, .Vadapalli Chandrasekhar, Ramamoorthy Boomishankar, Selvarajan Nagendran: Recent Developments in the Synthesis and Structure of Organosilanols, Chem. Rev. 2004, volume 104, pp 5847–5910, .
Occurrence TMS is a contaminant in the atmospheres of spacecraft, where it arises from the degradation of silicone-based materials.Trimethylsilanol, Harold L. Kaplan, Martin E. Coleman, John T. James: Spacecraft Maximum Allowable Concentrations for Selected Airborne Contaminants, Volume 1 (1994). Specifically, it is the volatile product from the hydrolysis of polydimethylsiloxane, which are generally terminated with trimethylsilyl groups:
TMS and related volatile siloxanes are formed by hydrolysis of silicones-based containing materials, which are found in detergents and cosmetic products.
Traces of trimethylsilanol, together with other volatile siloxanes, are present in biogas and landfill gas, again resulting from the degradation of silicones. As their combustion forms particles of silicates and microcrystalline quartz, which cause abrasion of combustion engine parts, they pose problems for the use of such gases in combustion engines.http://epics.ecn.purdue.edu/bgi/Documents/Fall%25202009/Removal_of_Siloxanes_.pdf
Production Trimethylsilanol cannot be produced by simple hydrolysis of chlorotrimethylsilane as this reaction leads to the etherification product hexamethyldisiloxane, because of the by-product hydrochloric acid.Didier Astruc: Organometallic Chemistry and Catalysis. Springer Science & Business Media, 2007, , S. 331 ().
Trimethylsilanol is accessible by weakly basic hydrolysis of chlorotrimethylsilane, since the dimerization can thus be avoided.J.A. Cella, J.C. Carpenter: Procedures for the preparation of silanols in J. Organomet. Chem. 480 (1994), 23–23; Trimethylsilanol can also be obtained by the basic hydrolysis of hexamethyldisiloxane.M. Lovric, I. Cepanec, M. Litvic, A. Bartolincic, V. Vinkovic: Croatia Chem. Acta 80 (2007), 109–115
Reactions Trimethylsilanol is a weak acid with a pKa value of 11.T. Kagiya, Y. Sumida, T. Tachi: An Infrared Spectroscopic Study of hydrogen Bonding Interaction. Structural Studies of Proton-donating and -accepting Powers in Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn. 43 (1970), 3716–3722. The acidity is comparable to that of orthosilicic acid, but much higher than the one of alcohols like tert-butanol (pKa 19). Deprotonation with sodium hydroxide gives sodium trimethylsiloxide.
TMS reacts with the silanols () giving silyl ethers.
Structure In terms of its structure, the molecule is tetrahedral. The compound forms monoclinic crystals.R. Minkwitz, S. Schneider: Die Tieftemperaturkristallstruktur von Trimethylsilanol. In: Zeitschrift für Naturforschung B. 53, 1998, S. 426–429 (PDF, freier Volltext).
Additional properties The heat of evaporation is 45.64 kJ·mol−1, the evaporation entropy 123 J·K−1·mol−1. The vapor pressure function according to Antoine is obtained as log10(P/1 bar) = A − B/(T + C) (P in bar, T in K) with A = 5.44591, B = 1767.766 K and C = −44.888 K in a temperature range from 291 K to 358 K. Below the melting point at −4.5 °C,Batuew et al. in Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 95 (1954) 531. The 1H NMR in CDCl3 shows a singlet at δ = 0.14 ppm.
Bioactivity Like other silanols, trimethylsilanol exhibits antimicrobial properties.
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