Encapsulation of Halocarbons in a Tetrahedral Anion Cage

Dong Yang; Jie Zhao; Yanxia Zhao; Yibo Lei; Liping Cao; Xiao-Juan Yang; Martin Davi; Nader de Sousa Amadeu; Christoph Janiak; Zhibin Zhang; Yao-Yu Wang; Biao Wu

doi:10.1002/anie.201502399

Encapsulation of Halocarbons in a Tetrahedral Anion Cage

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2015 Jul 20;54(30):8658-61. doi: 10.1002/anie.201502399. Epub 2015 Jun 5.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of the Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069 (China).
² Institut für Anorganische Chemie und Strukturchemie, Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225 Düsseldorf (Germany).
³ Division of Solid State Electronics, Department of Engineering Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala 75237 (Sweden).
⁴ Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of the Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069 (China). wubiao@nwu.edu.cn.

PMID: 26053734
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201502399

Abstract

Caged supramolecular systems are promising hosts for guest inclusion, separation, and stabilization. Well-studied examples are mainly metal-coordination-based or covalent architectures. An anion-coordination-based cage that is capable of encapsulating halocarbon guests is reported for the first time. This A4L4-type (A=anion) tetrahedral cage, [(PO4)4L4](12-), assembled from a C3-symmetric tris(bisurea) ligand (L) and phosphate ion (PO4(3-)), readily accommodates a series of quasi-tetrahedral halocarbons, such as the Freon components CFCl3, CF2Cl2, CHFCl2, and C(CH3)F3, and chlorocarbons CH2Cl2, CHCl3, CCl4, C(CH3)Cl3, C(CH3)2Cl2, and C(CH3)3Cl. The guest encapsulation in the solid state is confirmed by crystal structures, while the host-guest interactions in solution were demonstrated by NMR techniques.

Keywords: Freon; anion coordination; anion-based tetrahedral cages; halocarbons; inclusion compounds.