Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 28, 2026

Assembly, Tuning and Use of an Apertureless Near Field Infrared Microscope for Protein Imaging
Published on: November 25, 2009
Tuning the Intercage Distance in Charge-Regulated Blackberry-Type Assemblies through Host-Guest Chemistry
Hui Li1, Ruifu Wang1, You-Lee Hong2
1Department of Polymer Science, The University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325-3909, USA.
Abstract:
Charged or neutral adamantane guests can be encapsulated into the cavity of cationic metal-organic M6 L4 (bpy-cage, M=PdII (2,2'-bipyridine), L=2,4,6-tri(4-pyridyl)-1,3,5-triazine) cages through hydrophobic interaction. These encapsulations can provide an approach to control the net charge on the resulting cage-guest complexes and regulate their charge-dominated assembly into hollow spherical blackberry-type assemblies in dilute solutions: encapsulation of neutral guests will hardly influence their self-assembly process, including the blackberry structure size, which is directly related to the intercage distance in the assembly; whereas encapsulating negatively (positively) charged guests resulted in a shorter (longer) intercage distance with larger (smaller) assemblies formed. Therefore, the host-guest chemistry approach can be used to tune the intercage distance accurately.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Distance Problem
Short-distance Transport of Resources
Formal Charges
Protein Complex Assembly
Many viruses self-assemble into a fully functional unit using the infected host cell to...
Atomic Radii and Effective Nuclear Charge
Ions and Ionic Charges

