Increasing the reactivity of Vaska's compound. Oxidative addition of chlorobenzene at ambient temperature

Silylium ion-like reagents,R3Si delta+ (carborand(delta-)), are successful where silver salts fail in abstracting chloride ion from IrCl(CO)(PPh3)(2) in arene solvents. Replacement of chloride by a very weakly coordinating carborane anion such as CHB11H5Cl6- promotes unusually facile oxidative addition of chlorobenzene, giving the coordinatively unsaturated IrCl(CO)(C6H5)(PPh3)(2)](+) cation, Other arene solvents promote disproportionation with loss of a phosphine ligand to give labile Ir(I) cations of the type [Ir(arene)(CO)(PPh3)](+), having three latent vacant coordination sites.