In this study, we constructed chiral supramolecular cages by introducing an achiral C<sub>3h</sub> truxene unit with rotational patterns. In the self-assembly, Cu(II) Ions assembled with truxene faces through coordination-driven self-assembly. After crystallization, two types of crystals, i.e., racemic compounds and conglomerate were obtained depending on the counterions. The latter one with chiral self-sorting behavior during crystallization allowed us to achieve spontaneous resolution and isolate enantiomerically pure supramolecular cages without using any resolving agent or chiral HPLC. And we speculated that the arrangement of counterions influenced the packing of octahedra in crystal and resulted into different crystallization behaviors. To the best of our knowledge, our octahedron cages could be the largest discrete synthetic molecule system with chiral self-sorting behavior. These cages were fully characterized by X-ray single crystal diffraction, electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS), circular dichroism (CD). Furthermore, the cage has potential applications in selective recognition, chiral separation and catalysis.

Spontaneous resolution of an octahedral supramolecular cage

2019 Spring National Meeting

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