Anion binding and new architectures in supramolecular chemistry

Abstract

Across billions of years nature has been able to develop, through evolution, extremely efficient enzymes and proteins with very high affinity and specificity for anions, thanks to very specific binding pockets. One of the goals of synthetic chemists is definitely trying to mimic nature and perhaps achieve even better results. In the last few decades, the field of supramolecular chemistry has seen a big effort towards obtaining highly specific anion hosts and sensors. Despite the numerous and remarkable progress achieved in this field, selective anion recognition is still very challenging, and in this thesis further studies in this regard have been done. The use of interlocked structures and second-sphere coordination for anion binding has proved, once again, a viable and versatile method for coordinating anions. The construction and synthesis of innovative knotted and mechanically interlocked species is, therefore, very important and a new molecular link is also reported in this work. Its synthesis was achieved by exploiting a metal-based supramolecular interwoven grid strategy that has already proved useful for obtaining different architectures.

Date of Award	16 Apr 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	David Leigh (Main Supervisor) & Michael Greaney (Co Supervisor)