A Double-Walled Tetrahedron with AgI4 Vertices Binds Different Guests in Distinct Sites** |
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| Authors: | Samuel E. Clark Dr. Andrew W. Heard Dr. Charlie T. McTernan Dr. Tanya K. Ronson Dr. Barbara Rossi Petr Rozhin Prof. Silvia Marchesan Prof. Jonathan R. Nitschke |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge, CB2 1EW UK;2. Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste Basovizza, 34149 Trieste, Italy;3. Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste, Via Giorgieri 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy |
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| Abstract: | A double-walled tetrahedral metal-organic cage assembled in solution from silver(I), 2-formyl-1,8-naphthyridine, halide, and a threefold-symmetric triamine. The AgI4X clusters at its vertices each bring together six naphthyridine-imine moieties, leading to a structure in which eight tritopic ligands bridge four clusters in an (AgI4X)4L8 arrangement. Four ligands form an inner set of tetrahedron walls that are surrounded by the outer four. The cage has significant interior volume, and was observed to bind anionic guests. The structure also possesses external binding clefts, located at the edges of the cage, which bound small aromatic guests. Halide ions bound to the silver clusters were observed to exchange in a well-defined hierarchy, allowing modulation of the cavity volume. The principles uncovered here may allow for increasingly more sophisticated cages with silver-cluster vertex architectures, with post-assembly tuning of the interior cavity volume enabling targeted binding behavior. |
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| Keywords: | Metal Clusters Metal-Organic Cages Self-Assembly Supramolecular Chemistry |
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