A cyclic bis[2]catenane metallacage

Yiliang Wang; Yicheng Zhang; Zhixuan Zhou; Ryan T Vanderlinden; Bin Li; Bo Song; Xiaopeng Li; Lei Cui; Jian Li; Xueshun Jia; Jianhui Fang; Chunju Li; Peter J Stang

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16556-3

A cyclic bis[2]catenane metallacage

Nat Commun. 2020 Jun 1;11(1):2727. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16556-3.

Authors

Yiliang Wang¹, Yicheng Zhang¹, Zhixuan Zhou², Ryan T Vanderlinden², Bin Li¹, Bo Song³, Xiaopeng Li³, Lei Cui¹, Jian Li¹, Xueshun Jia¹, Jianhui Fang¹, Chunju Li^{4

5}, Peter J Stang⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for Supramolecular Chemistry and Catalysis and Department of Chemistry, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for Supramolecular Chemistry and Catalysis and Department of Chemistry, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China. cjli@shu.edu.cn.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Functional Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Structure and Performance for Functional Molecules, College of Chemistry, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, China. cjli@shu.edu.cn.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA. stang@chem.utah.edu.

Abstract

Catenated cages represent chemistry's challenging synthetic targets because a three-dimensional assembly is necessary for their formation. Herein, a cyclic bis[2]catenane is constructed through the coordination-driven self-assembly of the interlocked bis-metallacage, by the 90° Pt(II) heteroligation of the endo-functionalized double-bridged tweezer bearing pyridyl moieties and the tetra-carboxylated linker. NMR spectrometry, X-ray crystallography and mass spectrometry confirm the formation of a cyclic bis[2]catenane with "∞"-shaped topology via a 14-component self-assembly. Particularly, reversibly responsive transformation between the bis[2]catenane and the bis-metallacage can be realized by guest exchange, concentration effect and solvent effect. This work represents a novel example of a cyclic cage-based [2]catenane oligomer.