Ordered Entanglement in Actinide-Organic Coordination Polymers

Entangled structures in actinide-organic hybrid materials featured by intertwining between isolated motifs show promising potential in the application of different fields, such as radionuclide separation, radiation detection, photocatalysis and smart materials. Since how the individual motifs are entangled in combination of molecular structures of the structural units and topology of the individual motifs contributes most to the properties of actinide entangled materials, it is of significance to summarize and analyze these entanglements with diverse topologies. For this contribution, we will summarize all the entanglements in the reported actinide-organic entangled structures by classifying them according to the diverse catalogues of individual motifs and entangled patterns between them, among which are included all these intriguing types of entanglement in different seperate sections: 1) polyrotaxanes; 2) parallel interpenetration (INT) and polycatenation (P-CAT and I-CAT); and 3) Borromean ring (BR). This work is aimed at figuring out some clues on design principles of actinide-organic entangled structures, the underlying rules of ordered entanglement and driving forces behind from our perspective so as to provide some valuable principles guiding the assembly process of entangled structures for reference and help to achieve the controlled syntheses of actinide compounds of interest in the future.