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Solvent effects upon guest binding and dynamics of a Fe(II)4L4 cage.


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Authors

Bolliger, Jeanne L 
Ronson, Tanya K 
Ogawa, Masahiro 
Nitschke, Jonathan R 

Abstract

Solvent-dependent host-guest chemistry and favoring of otherwise disfavored conformations of large guests has been achieved with an adaptive, self-assembled Fe(II)4L4 coordination cage. Depending on the counterion, this face-capped tetrahedral capsule is soluble either in water or in acetonitrile and shows a solvent-dependent preference for encapsulation of certain classes of guest molecules. Quantitative binding studies were undertaken, revealing that both aromatic and aliphatic guests bind in water, whereas only aliphatic guests bind in acetonitrile. The flexibility of its subcomponent building blocks allows this cage to expand or contract upon guest binding, as studied by VT-NMR, thereby ensuring strong binding of both small and large guests. Upon encapsulation, large guest molecules can adopt conformations which are not thermodynamically favored in the free state. In addition, the chirotopic inner phase of the cage renders enantiotopic guest proton signals diastereotopic in specific cases.

Description

Keywords

Binding Sites, Crystallography, X-Ray, Ferrous Compounds, Ligands, Models, Molecular, Molecular Structure, Solvents, Thermodynamics

Journal Title

J Am Chem Soc

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0002-7863
1520-5126

Volume Title

136

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K039520/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/J001163/1)
We thank the National Crystallography Service at Southampton for collecting X-ray data, I. A. Riddell for the measurement of ESI Mass Spectra, and P. Grice and D. Howe for helpful discussions regarding NMR experiments. This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) (J.L.B.) and the European Research Council (ERC), and M.O. was funded by a JSPS RONPAKU (Ph.D. dissertation) Fellowship.