A Metal-Organic Polyhedron-to-Coordination Polymer Transition Revealed by 3D Electron Diffraction.

Porous metal-organic polyhedra (MOPs) have strong covalent and coordinate bonds that define the intrinsic pore of the cage. The intermolecular interactions between cages tend to be weaker, such that they rearrange during the solvent exchange process preceding gas sorption measurements. The reduction in crystal size that this often causes limits the availability of structural data that could enable understanding of observed gas uptake.

Higher Assemblies of Coordination Cage-Catenanes Linked by Copper(II) Chloride Clusters: Networks and Transformations.

Cage-catenanes are chemical constructs where two or more cage-like molecules or assemblies are mechanically interlocked together. We report a new class of cage-catenanes where dimeric metal-organic cage-catenanes are linked into larger assemblies through additional bridging metal chloride links. These crystalline materials are obtained from the reaction of tris(nicotinoyl)cyclotriguaiacylene (L1) with Cu(II) salts, and all feature a tetramer of cages where two {Cu(L1)(X)} cages (X=anion) are mechanically interlocked, and link to each other and to another {Cu(L1)(X)} cage-catenane through a planar, linear tetranuclear {Cu(μ-Cl)Cl} cluster.