Self-assembly of nanoscale cuboctahedra by coordination chemistry

Bogdan Olenyuk, Jeffery A. Whiteford, Andreas Fechtenkötter and Peter J. Stang ()
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Bogdan Olenyuk: University of Utah
Jeffery A. Whiteford: University of Utah
Andreas Fechtenkötter: University of Utah
Peter J. Stang: University of Utah

Nature, 1999, vol. 398, issue 6730, 796-799

Abstract: Abstract Self-assembled polyhedral structures are common in biology. The coats of many viruses, for example, have a structure based on icosahedral symmetry1. The preparation of synthetic polyhedral molecular assemblies represents a challenging problem, but supramolecular chemistry2,3,4 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 phenomena5,6,7,8, molecular recognition5,6 and catalysis9. Here we report the use of self-assembly of molecular units driven by coordination to transition-metal ions10 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.

Date: 1999
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DOI: 10.1038/19740

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