Issue 41, 2023

Picking the lock of coordination cage catalysis

Abstract

The design principles of metallo-organic assembly reactions have facilitated access to hundreds of coordination cages of varying size and shape. Many of these assemblies possess a well-defined cavity capable of hosting a guest, pictorially mimicking the action of a substrate binding to the active site of an enzyme. While there are now a growing collection of coordination cages that show highly proficient catalysis, exhibiting both excellent activity and efficient turnover, this number is still small compared to the vast library of metal–organic structures that are known. In this review, we will attempt to unpick and discuss the key features that make an effective coordination cage catalyst, linking structure to activity (and selectivity) using lessons learnt from both experimental and computational analysis of the most notable exemplars. We will also provide an outlook for this area, reasoning why coordination cages have the potential to become the gold-standard in (synthetic) non-covalent catalysis.

Graphical abstract: Picking the lock of coordination cage catalysis

Transparent peer review

To support increased transparency, we offer authors the option to publish the peer review history alongside their article.

View this article’s peer review history

Article information

Article type
Perspective
Submitted
22 5月 2023
Accepted
29 8月 2023
First published
08 9月 2023
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2023,14, 11300-11331

Picking the lock of coordination cage catalysis

T. K. Piskorz, V. Martí-Centelles, R. L. Spicer, F. Duarte and P. J. Lusby, Chem. Sci., 2023, 14, 11300 DOI: 10.1039/D3SC02586A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements