Equatorial Gate Opening Efficiency of Single and Double, S-S Gated Hemicarcerands

Abstract

Covalent disulphides bonds are very strong in oxidizing environments and are weakened in reducing environments. So far, there has been no reported study on multi-gate induced hemicarcerands. In this work, the stability and redox properties were investigated, as well as efficiency of the number of disulphide gates can provide in equatorial escape of a guest in two chosen hemicarcerand systems. Single and opposite double gated hemicarcerands were designed in Gauss view 5.0 and structures were optimized using HF 3-21G* basis set. It is concluded from the studies that the opposite double gated system has more guest encapsulating efficiency in redox conditions than single gated hemicarcerand, which makes it a potential cancer drug carrier due to its selective gate opening at high redox conditions.