title: Self-assembly of nanoscale cuboctahedra by coordination chemistry.
abstract: Self-assembled polyhedral structures are common in biology. The coats of many viruses, for example, have a structure based on icosahedral symmetry. The preparation of synthetic polyhedral molecular assemblies represents a challenging problem, but supramolecular chemistry 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 phenomena, molecular recognition and catalysis. Here we report the use of self-assembly of molecular units driven by coordination to transition-metal ions 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 84112, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Olenyuk
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Whiteford
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fechtenkötter
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Stang
mesh_terms: D001555:Benzene Derivatives / Q000737:chemistry*; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods; D008958:Models, Molecular; D015394:Molecular Structure
chemical_list: D001555:Benzene Derivatives