Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CaTs n DOCs (Chemically and Thermally Stable Nano-sized Discrete Organic Cage Compounds)
Reporting period: 2021-10-01 to 2022-03-31
In recent years, shape-persistent organic cage compounds found multiple applications as new type of porous materials, e.g. for separation of compounds, selective recognition or sensing applications. The advantage in comparison to 'common' porous materials is their molecular nature and thus their solubility, making it easier to process them or get crystalline materials. However, the vast majority of cages is made by DCC reactions and thus these are less stable as well as the materials, based on these.
The objective of the ERC project is to combine both advantages of reversible and irreversible bond formations to make chemically and thermally stable nanosized discrete organic cage compounds to provide the next generation of porous or functional organic molecules.
One main achievement is the the transformation of shape-persistent imine cages to amide cages (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 8819-8823; Chem. Eur. J. 2022, e202201527) by Pinnick-oxidation. These are very stable and the smaller ones, we have generated by this method are exceptionally good nitrate receptors, which may lead to new materials to remove nitrate from drinking water. Another succesful approch was the conversion to quinoline cages by Povarov reactions (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, 59, 19675-19679). These are to the best of our knowledge the most stable cages, reported so far in a wide pH-range. The quinoline cages show a pronounced acidochromy, which can be used for sensing applications. We also were able to demonstrate that imine cages can be stabilized by hosting charged species inside (ChemistryOpen 2020, 9, 183-190.). This is known from nature, e.g. for the tobacco mosaic viru. A real highlight was the transformation of imine cages to pure hydrocarbon cages by the Overberger-Lombardino reaction (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 1768-1773). With this reaction, the fundament is formed to open new synthetic routes to larger fullerenes. It is wort to be mentioned that all the conversion these reactions occurred with good to sometimes even excellent overall yields. During the action, the formation of new cage geometries were developed (Chem. Eur. J. 2018, 24, 1816-1820; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, 60, 8896-890; Org. Chem. Front. 2021, 8, 3668-3674) as well as an unforeseen catenation based on weak dispersion interactions (Nat. Chem.; accepted). Very important are also cage formation studies as well as studies toward their reversibility and stability (J. Org. Chem. 2020, 85, 13757-13771;Chem. Eur. J. 2021, 27, 9383-9390). Besides transforming imines, we also developed a new reaction to transfom disulfides to thioethers with N-heterocyclic carbenes (patent filed: WO2021214243A1;EP3901135A4). We applied this to materials chemistry but also to peptide chemistry; here to model compounds found in lantibiotics.