Affiliation:
1. Environmental Research at Greater Bay Area Key Laboratory for Water Quality and Conservation of the Pearl River Delta Ministry of Education Guangzhou University Guangzhou 510006 China
2. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Central South University Changsha 410083 China
3. South China Advanced Institute for Soft Matter Science and Technology & State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640 China
4. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Henan Normal University Xinxiang Henan 453007 China
Abstract
AbstractCoordinative supramolecular cages with adjustable cavities have found extensive applications in various fields, but the cavity modification strategies for multi‐functional structures are still challenging. Here, we present a tension‐driven self‐expansion strategy for construction of multi‐cavity cages with high structural complexity. Under the regulation of strain‐induced capping ligands, unprecedented heteromorphosis triple‐cavity cages S2/S4 were obtained based on a metallo‐organic ligand (MOL) scaffold. The heteromorphosis cages exhibited significant higher cavity diversity than the homomorphous double‐cavity cages S1/S3; all of the cages were thoroughly characterized through various analytical techniques including (1D and 2D) NMR, ESI‐MS, TWIM‐MS, AFM, and SAXS analyses. Furthermore, the encapsulation of porphyrin in the cavities of these multi‐cavity cages were investigated. This research opens up new possibilities for the architecture of heteromorphosis supramolecular cages via precisely controlled “scaffold‐capping” assembly with preorganized ligands, which could have potential applications in the development of multifunctional structures with higher complexity.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation