Serhii Krykun ; Maksym Dekhtiarenko ; David Canevet ; Vincent Carré ; Frédéric Aubriet ; Eric Levillain ; Magali Allain ; Zoia Voitenko ; Marc Sallé ; Sébastien Goeb
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2019). DOI

Travail réalisé sur le site de l’Université de Lorraine.

Abstract

Developing methodologies for on‐demand control of the release of a molecular guest requires the rational design of stimuli‐responsive hosts with functional cavities. While a substantial number of responsive metallacages have already been described, the case of coordination‐tweezers has been less explored. Herein, we report the first example of a redox‐triggered guest release from a metalla‐assembled tweezer. This tweezer incorporates two redox‐active panels constructed from the electron‐rich 9‐(1,3‐dithiol‐2‐ylidene)fluorene unit that are facing each other. It dimerizes spontaneously in solution and the resulting interpenetrated supramolecular structure can dissociate in the presence of an electron‐poor planar unit, forming a 1:1 host–guest complex. This complex dissociates upon tweezer oxidation/dimerization, offering an original redox‐triggered molecular delivery pathway.