The structure of 3-(diethylborylethynyl)pyridine: a nonplanarly arranged cyclic trimer.

3-(Diethylborylethynyl)pyridines 2 assemble into a cyclic trimer stabilized via intermolecular boron­nitrogen coordination bonds both in solution and in the crystalline state. The outstanding structural features of the methoxy derivative 2b in the crystalline state are that (1) two pyridine rings (P1 and P2) of the cyclic trimer of 2b are almost coplanar, and the third pyridine ring (P3) is largely bent away from P1 and P2, and (2) P3 of the cyclic trimer stacks in a face-to-face fashion with one of the pyridine rings (P3') of an adjacent cyclic trimer. The crystallographic study revealed that the conformation of the cyclic trimer is flexible enough to be affected by the crystal packing.