Metal carbonyl 18-electron complexes is sometimes catalysed by catalytic amounts of oxidants, via electron-transfer. Metal carbonyls react with reducing agents such as metallic sodium or sodium amalgam to give carbonylmetalate (or carbonylate) anions: For iron pentacarbonyl, one obtains the tetracarbonylferrate with loss of CO: Mercury can insert into the metal-metal bonds of some polynuclear metal carbonyls: The CO ligand is often susceptible to attack by nucleophiles. For example, trimethylamine oxide and bistrimethylsilylamide convert CO ligands to CO and CN, respectively. In the "Hieber base reaction", hydroxide ion attacks the CO ligand to give a metallacarboxylic acid, followed by the release of carbon
Mercury(II) hydride a mixture of petroleum ether and tetrahydrofuran. In 1993 Legay-Sommaire announced HgH production in cryogenic argon and krypton matrices with a KrF laser. In 2004, solid HgH was definitively synthesized and consequentially analysed, by Xuefeng Wang and Lester Andrews, by direct matrix isolation reaction of excited mercury with molecular hydrogen. In 2005, gaseous HgH was synthesized by Alireza Shayesteh "et al", by the direct gas-phase reaction of excited mercury with molecular hydrogen at standard temperature; and Xuefeng Wang and Lester Andrews determined the structure of solid mercury HgH, to be a molecular solid. Mercury(II) hydride Mercury(II) hydride (systematically named mercurane(2)