The facile synthesis of the first stable selenosilanoic acid-base adduct Using organic molecular defined species containing M-O-Si moieties as structural models for silica-supported metal/metal oxide catalysts has been proved to be a facile method to unravel the structure of a pre-catalyst as well as the mechanism of a catalytic reaction. 1 For example, the globular 56-membered copper(I) siloxane containing core made up of Cu-O-Si moieties (Chart 1), which is even soluble in organic solvents, could be prepared by the reaction of silanetriol with (MesCu) 4 (Mes = 2,4,6-Me 3 C 6 H 2 ). This copper siloxane cluster is active for the Ullmann-Goldberg-type C-N coupling reaction, 2 and can serve as a structural and functional model for silica-supported copper (pre)catalysts. In order to better understand the structurereactivity relationships of Cu-O-Si systems for various Cu-based chemical transformations, the synthesis of other types of Cu-O-Si containing compounds as structural and functional models for metallated terminal OH groups of silica surfaces is desired.Organic silanols have been reported to form well defined M-O-Si type compounds including silanediols, disiloxane-1,3-diols, silanetriols, trisiloxane-diol and silsesquioxane-triols (Chart 1). 1a,b,3,4 As possible intermediates involved in silica synthesis through hydrolysis of suitable silicon(IV) starting materials under acidic conditions, silicic acids, SiO x (OH) 4À2x , have not received much attention as precursors for the selective synthesis of M-O-Si compounds owing to their elusive nature. Likewise, organic silanoic acids RSi(QO)OH, the silicon analogues of carboxylic acids, represent elusive species which could only be studied at liquid nitrogen temperatures because of the presence of the highly polarized Si QO subunit which can undergo facile isomerisation or intermolecular head-to-tail polymerisation. 5 Recently, we reported the synthesis of the first isolable silanoic acid-base adducts, including the thiosilanoic system LSi(QS)OH(dmap) 1 (L = CH[C(Me)NAr] 2 , Ar = 2,6-iPr 2 C 6 H 3 , dmap = 4-dimethylaminopyridine) which is stabilised via hydrogen bonding to the pyridine N atom of dmap (Chart 1). 6 With these compounds in hand it became possible to employ 1 as a building block for Si(QS)-O-M formation. Accordingly, we reported the formation and reactivity of an isolable monomeric Si(QS)-O-Mn(II) complex. 7 Herein, we report the unexpectedly facile synthesis of the first isolable selenosilanoic acid-base adduct LSi( QSe)OH(dmap) 3 (Chart 1), and the Cu-metallation reactions of 1 and 3 with (MesCu) 4 to give the novel dimeric LSi(QE)OCu complexes 4 (E = S) and 5 (E = Se) with unprecedented intermolecular Si QE -Cu-O-Si coordination modes. In addition, their ability to serve as efficient pre-catalysts Chart 1