Guest Encapsulation Alters the Thermodynamic Landscape of a Coordination Host
Journal article, 2023

The architecture of self-assembled host molecules can profoundly affect the properties of the encapsulated guests. For example, a rigid cage with small windows can efficiently protect its contents from the environment; in contrast, tube-shaped, flexible hosts with large openings and an easily accessible cavity are ideally suited for catalysis. Here, we report a “Janus” nature of a Pd6L4 coordination host previously reported to exist exclusively as a tube isomer (T). We show that upon encapsulating various tetrahedrally shaped guests, T can reconfigure into a cage-shaped host (C) in quantitative yield. Extracting the guest affords empty C, which is metastable and spontaneously relaxes to T, and the T⇄C interconversion can be repeated for multiple cycles. Reversible toggling between two vastly different isomers paves the way toward controlling functional properties of coordination hosts “on demand”.

Author

Hema Kuntrapakam

Weizmann Institute of Science

Angela Beth Grommet

Weizmann Institute of Science

Michał J Białek

University of Wrocław

Jinhua Wang

Weizmann Institute of Science

Laura Schneider

Technische Universität Dortmund

Christoph Drechsler

Technische Universität Dortmund

Oksana Yanshyna

Weizmann Institute of Science

Yael Diskin-Posner

Weizmann Institute of Science

Guido H. Clever

Technische Universität Dortmund

Rafal Klajn

Weizmann Institute of Science

Journal of the American Chemical Society

0002-7863 (ISSN) 1520-5126 (eISSN)

Vol. 145 45 24755-24764

Subject Categories

Chemical Sciences

DOI

10.1021/jacs.3c08666

More information

Latest update

7/4/2024 1