
Dimethylmercury is an extremely toxic organomercury compound with the formula (CH3)2Hg. A volatile, flammable, dense and colorless liquid, dimethylmercury is one of the strongest known neurotoxins. Less than 0.1 mL is capable of inducing severe mercury poisoning resulting in death.
Dimethylmercury is an extremely toxic organomercury compound with the formula (CH3)2Hg. A volatile, flammable, dense and colorless liquid, dimethylmercury is one of the strongest known neurotoxins. Less than 0.1 mL is capable of inducing severe mercury poisoning resulting in death.
==Synthesis, structure, and reactions== The compound was one of the earliest organometallics reported, reflecting its considerable stability. The compound was first prepared by George Buckton in 1857 by a reaction of methylmercury iodide with potassium cyanide: 2 CH3HgI + 2 KCN → Hg(CH3)2 + 2 KI + (CN)2 + Hg Later, Edward Frankland discovered that it could be synthesized by treating sodium amalgam with methyl halides: Hg + 2 Na + 2 CH3I → Hg(CH3)2 + 2 NaI It can also be obtained by alkylation of mercuric chloride with methyllithium: HgCl2 + 2 LiCH3 → Hg(CH3)2 + 2 LiCl The molecule adopts a linear structure with Hg–C bond lengths of 2.083 Å.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).