King-Lung Tong, Chi-Chung Yee, Yuen Cheong Tse and Ho Yu Au-Yeung
Inorg. Chem. Front., 2016,3, 348-353
DOI:
10.1039/C5QI00227C,
Research Article
We report here a DCL study of a phenanthroline-based building block focusing on catenane formation with copper templates. Two [2]catenanes have been amplified by using Cu+ as a template from the DCLs that contain no interlocked compounds in the absence of copper. In addition, an unexpected Cu2+ template effect on the [2]catenane formation was discovered. The observed Cu2+ template effect was found to originate from the in situ reduction of the divalent metal to Cu+.