Molecular tectonics. Dendritic construction of porous hydrogen-bonded networks

Molecules that associate to form porous networks can be made by attaching multiple hydrogen-bonding sites to suitable cores. Pentaerythrityl tetraphenyl ether, a four-armed core, is the progenitor of dendritic derivatives with more arms, including dipentaerythrityl hexaphenyl ether 7. An advantage of such dendritic derivatives is that the resulting networks are held together by larger numbers of intermolecular hydrogen bonds. [structure: see text]