Fully Supramolecular Chiral Hydrogen-Bonded Molecular Tweezer

Molecular tweezers are open-ended, cavity-possessing U-shaped molecular architectures with high potential for various applications in supramolecular chemistry. Their covalent synthesis, however, is often tedious and the structures obtained lack structural responsiveness beyond the limited conformational flexibility of the scaffold. Herein we present a proof-of-concept study on the design, synthesis, assembly, and transformations of a novel supramolecular construct─a fully noncovalent molecular tweezer. The supramolecular tweezer was assembled from a set of four building blocks, composed of two identical molecular angle bars and two flat aromatic extension wings, using hydrogen bonding only. The chirality-assisted aggregation process was utilized to ensure scaffold bending directionality using enantiomerically pure bicyclic angle bars. To address the challenges associated with shifting of the equilibrium from strong cooperative narcissistic self-sorting of self-complementary angle bars in cyclic aggregates toward integrative self-sorting in molecular tweezers, a rational desymmetrization strategy was applied. The dynamic supramolecular tweezer has been shown to display rich supramolecular chemistry, allowing for stimuli-responsive change in aggregate topology and solvent-responsive supramolecular polymerization.