Rotational and constitutional dynamics of caged supramolecules

The confinement of guest species in nanoscale environments leads to new dynamic phenomena. Notably the organisation and rotational motions of individual molecules were controlled by carefully designed, fully supramolecular host architectures. Here we use an open 2D coordination network on a smooth metal surface to steer the self-assembly of discrete trimeric guest units, identified as noncovalently bound dynamers. Each caged chiral supramolecule performs concerted, chirality-preserving rotary motions within the template honeycomb pore, which are visualized and quantitatively analyzed using temperature-controlled scanning tunneling microscopy. With higher thermal energies furthermore a constitutional system dynamics appears, that is revealed by monitoring repetitive switching events of the confined supramolecules’ chirality signature, reflecting decay and reassembly of caged units.     «

The confinement of guest species in nanoscale environments leads to new dynamic phenomena. Notably the organisation and rotational motions of individual molecules were controlled by carefully designed, fully supramolecular host architectures. Here we use an open 2D coordination network on a smooth metal surface to steer the self-assembly of discrete trimeric guest units, identified as noncovalently bound dynamers. Each caged chiral supramolecule performs concerted, chirality-preserving rotary mo...     »