Chiral Self-Assembly of Twisted Prisms, Cuboids, and Polyhedral Capped Cages with Tartrate Ligands

Homochiral triangular prisms, cuboid cages, and capped polyhedral cages are successfully synthesized via coordination-driven self-assembly. Typical tartrate ligands demonstrated notable torsional flexibility and variable coordination numbers, allowing for diverse coordination patterns, including saturated chelation and terminal mono-coordination with half-sandwich rhodium and iridium fragments. The ligand lengths, molar ratios, and metal vertices are meticulously designed and fine-tuned to yield chiral cages with entirely distinct architectures. Tartrate ligand exhibits abundant hydrogen bonding interactions and chiral induction capabilities, these supramolecular assemblies are characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, and circular dichroism spectroscopy. An efficient method is developed for constructing chiral structurally versatile cage-like entities, facilitating self-assembly in complicated multi-component systems.