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Abstract A self-assembled coordination cage usually possesses one well-defined three-dimensional (3D) cavity whereas infinite number of 3D-cavities are crafted in a designer metal-organic framework. Construction of a discrete coordination cage possessing multiple number of 3D-cavities is a challenging task. Here we report the peripheral decoration of a trinuclear Pd 3 L 6 core with one, two and three units of a Pd 2 L 4 entity for the preparation of multi-3D-cavity conjoined-cages of Pd 4 (L a ) 2 (L b ) 4 , Pd 5 (L b ) 4 (L c ) 2 and Pd 6 (L c ) 6 formulations, respectively. Formation of the tetranuclear and pentanuclear complexes is attributed to the favorable integrative self-sorting of the participating components. Cage-fusion reactions and ligand-displacement-induced cage-to-cage transformation reactions are carried out using appropriately chosen ligand components and cages prepared in this work. The smaller Pd 2 L 4 cavity selectively binds one unit of NO 3 − , F − , Cl − or Br − while the larger Pd 3 L 6 cavity accommodates up to four DMSO molecules. Designing aspects of our conjoined-cages possess enough potential to inspire construction of exotic molecular architectures.
Samantray et al. (Fri,) studied this question.