Self-assembly of nanoscale cuboctahedra by coordination chemistry

Self-assembled polyhedral structures are common in biology. The coats of many viruses, for example, have a structure based on icosahedral symmetry. The preparation of synthetic polyhedral molecular assemblies represents a challenging problem, but supramolecular chemistry,, has now advanced to the po...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1999-04, Vol.398 (6730), p.796-799
Main Authors: Stang, Peter J, Olenyuk, Bogdan, Whiteford, Jeffery A, Fechtenkötter, Andreas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Benzene Derivatives - chemistry
Catalysis
Chemistry
Colloidal state and disperse state
Exact sciences and technology
General and physical chemistry
Humanities and Social Sciences
letter
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Mass spectrometry
Mass Spectrometry - methods
Miscellaneous
Models, Molecular
Molecular Structure
Molecules
multidisciplinary
Nanotechnology
Science
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Summary:Self-assembled polyhedral structures are common in biology. The coats of many viruses, for example, have a structure based on icosahedral symmetry. The preparation of synthetic polyhedral molecular assemblies represents a challenging problem, but supramolecular chemistry,, has now advanced to the point where the task may be addressed. Macromolecular and supramolecular entities of predefined geometric shape and with well-defined internal environments are potentially important for inclusion phenomena,,, molecular recognition, and catalysis. Here we report the use of self-assembly of molecular units driven by coordination to transition-metal ions to prepare a cuboctahedron from 20 tridentate and bidentate subunits in a single step. The cuboctahedron is an archimedean semiregular polyhedron that combines square and triangular faces. Our self-assembled polyhedral capsules, characterized by NMR and electrospray mass spectrometry, are around 5 nanometres in diameter.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/19740