Various polyhedral boranes are the subject of significant attention because of their various useful properties and important applications such as in boron neutron-capture cancer therapy.

Vadim Kukushkin, Nadezhda Bokach, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia, and co-workers found an efficient route for facile functionalization of decaborates that can be achieved through a novel reaction between closo-decaborate clusters bearing the C≡N group and azomethine ylides. This selectively affords products of the nucleophilic addition viz., the borylated enamino ketones.
The observed reaction represents the first example of addition of any C-nucleophiles to nitrilium derivatives of boron clusters.

In addition the reaction mechanism has been studied by density functional calculations.

• Coupling of Azomethine Ylides with Nitrilium Derivatives of closo-Decaborate Clusters: A Synthetic and Theoretical Study,
  Aleksey L. Mindich, Nadezhda A. Bokach, Maxim L. Kuznetsov, Matti Haukka, Andrey P. Zhdanov, Konstantin Yu. Zhizhin, Serguei A. Miltsov, Nikolay T. Kuznetsov, Vadim Yu. Kukushkin,
  ChemPlusChem 2012.
  DOI: 10.1002/cplu.201200257