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Updated: Sep 15, 2025

Design, Synthesis, and Photochemical Properties of Clickable Caged Compounds
Published on: October 15, 2019
A Visible-Light-Responsive Octahedral Cage for Efficient and Selective Cross-[2 + 2] Cycloadditions
Rikuya Tanaka1, Hiroki Takezawa1, Makoto Fujita2,3
1Department of Applied Chemistry, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Mitsui Link Lab Kashiwanoha 1, FS CREATION, 6-6-2 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-0882, Japan.
Abstract:
Host-guest complexation enhances or even alters photoreaction selectivity by preorganizing substrates within the host's confined cavities. Since most previous hosts exhibited no visible-light absorption, at least one of the reactants needed to be an aromatic compound with UV-light absorption. Here, we developed a visible-light-responsive M6L4 octahedral cage that retains the encapsulation ability of standard M6L4 cages by simply replacing the photoinert metal unit at every vertex with a photoactive cyclometalated Pt(II) unit. This design enabled efficient visible-light-induced cross-[2 + 2] cycloadditions of inert substrates, demonstrating perfect stereo- and site-selectivity via confinement. The selective cross-[2 + 2] cycloaddition was achieved even catalytically, which was impossible with previous M6L4 cages.
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