Assembling Planer-Chiral Ferrocene Ligand into Ultra-Large Helical Nanotubes

摘要

Helices are versatile structural motifs that are commonly found in biological macromolecules. As the synthetic mimics of those biomolecules, helical fibers, ribbons and tubes have been reported to date. In 2015, we developed a helical metal-organic nanotube (FcNT) by the complexation of an achiral ferrocene-cored tetratopic pyridyl ligand (FcL) with silver cations carrying chiral counter anions. Detailed structural analysis of FcNT revealed that it comprises helically stacked decagonal coordination nanorings consisting of ten FcL ligands and twenty silver cations.1,2