Supramolecular Chirality: A Reporter of Structural Memory

✍ Scribed by Marco Ziegler; Anna V. Davis; Darren W. Johnson; Kenneth N. Raymond

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 172 KB
• Volume: 42
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-8249
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.200390183

✦ Synopsis

on the occasion of his 60th birthday Herein we describe a molecular structure, formed from labile components, that exhibits structural memory. The macroscopic model in Figure 1 demonstrates this principle. The wooden icosohedral puzzle retains its structure (without any glue) despite dissociation of several pieces. These labile pieces can be removed and replaced without disassembly of the original structure. The structure itself is retained, or remembered, throughout the process of component substitution. In short, structural memory describes the substitution process itself and not merely the starting and ending states of the system.

Like the wooden puzzle, discrete supramolecular assemblies exhibit well-defined topologies, specified by the arrangement and connectivity of the constituent molecular components. If these molecular components can be substituted in a stepwise fashion and the supramolecular structure still persists, then there is structural memory. We describe such structural memory-as reported by retention of chirality-in