Assembly of silver Trigons into a buckyball-like Ag 180 nanocage

Significance Here we present a striking outcome from the alliance between chemistry and mathematics in the design, synthesis, and characterization of a silver cage, Ag 180 . In principle, the design replaces each carbon atom of C 60 with a triplet of argentophilicity-bonded silver atoms to produce a 3.4.6.4 (1,1) polyhedron with sixty 3-gons, ninety 4-gons, twelve 5-gons, and twenty 6-gons. Results from mass spectroscopy suggest an assembly mechanism in solution based on such triplets––the Silver-Trigon Assembly Road (STAR). Indeed, the STAR mechanism may be a general synthetic pathway toward even larger silver polyhedral cages. Besides its fundamental appeal, this synthetic cage may be considered for use as a molecular luminescent thermometer.