Acharyya Koushik, Mukherjee Partha Sarathi
Department of Inorganic & Physical Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 Jun 24;58(26):8640-8653. doi: 10.1002/anie.201900163. Epub 2019 Apr 12.
Imine condensation has been known to chemists for more than a century and is used extensively to synthesize large organic cages of defined shapes and sizes. Surprisingly, in the context of the synthetic methods for organic imine cages (OICs), a self-sorting/self-selection (molecular marriage) process has been overlooked over the years. Such processes are omnipresent in nature, from the creation of galaxies to the formation of the smallest building blocks of life (the cell). Such processes have the incredible ability to guide a system toward the formation of a specific product or products out of a collection of equally probable multiple possibilities. This Minireview sheds light on new opportunities in cage design offered by the self-sorting/self-selection protocol in OICs. Recent efforts to explore organic cages for various exciting new applications are discussed; for example, for detection of harmful small organic molecules, as templates for nucleation of metal nanoparticles (MNPs), and as proton-conducting materials.
亚胺缩合已为化学家们所熟知超过一个世纪，并被广泛用于合成具有特定形状和尺寸的大型有机笼状化合物。令人惊讶的是，在有机亚胺笼（OICs）的合成方法背景下，多年来一种自分类/自选择（分子配对）过程一直被忽视。此类过程在自然界无处不在，从星系的形成到生命最小构建单元（细胞）的形成。这些过程具有令人难以置信的能力，能够引导一个系统从一系列同等可能的多种可能性中形成一种或多种特定产物。本综述揭示了OICs中自分类/自选择方案为笼状化合物设计带来的新机遇。文中讨论了近期为探索有机笼状化合物用于各种令人兴奋的新应用所做的努力；例如，用于检测有害的小有机分子、作为金属纳米颗粒（MNPs）成核的模板以及作为质子传导材料。
