Silicon Analogues of Triarylmethanol Hosts. Inclusion Properties and Host–guest Structures: A Comparative Study

The simple triarylmethanol hosts, 2 and 4, and their silicon analogues, 1 and 3, have been studied for comparison of the formation of crystalline inclusion compounds. Clathrate formation experiments showed that replacement of the carbinol C atoms in 2 and 4 by Si atoms to give 1 and 3 resulted in a distinct increase of the capability to form inclusion compounds with organic guests, in particular with alcohols. Moreover, the naphthyl derivatives are much more efficient than the phenyl species, irrespective of the carbinol and silanol features. In order to investigate and compare the guest recognition modes and packing relations of hosts 1–4 in their crystalline inclusion compounds, 11 selected co-crystals, namely 1·DMSO (2:1), 3·EtOH (1:1), 3· i-PrOH (1:1), 3·acetone (1:1), 3·DMSO (1:1), 3·THF (1:1), 3·piperidine (1:1), 4·acetone (1:1), 4·DMSO (1:1), 4·1,4-dioxane (1:1) and 4·benzene (1:1), were studied by X-ray diffraction from single crystals. The survey contains additional 11 crystal structures from the literature and provides a detailed discussion of isostructurality relationships.Supplementary Data relevant to this publication have been deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre as supplementary publications nos. CCDC 274780–274790.