Beyond their aesthetic appeal, molecular links and knots are worthy synthetic targets that expand the chemist’s repertoire of potential building blocks for the engineering of nanoscale devices. [2]Catenanes ([2]C), trefoil knots (TK), and Solomon links (SL) are three such idealized topologies that have been realized synthetically. Although a wide variety of [2]C (mechanically interlocked molecules comprised of two macrocycles) have been synthesized by statistical, covalent, or template-directed methods, there are significantly fewer examples of efficient construction of molecular TKs and SLs.
Recently, we have reported the simultaneous preparation of the three links (Figure) from a simple pair of chelating ligand in a one pot synthesis. The output of this research was published in Angewandte Chemie and selected to appear on the inside cover. Efforts in the functionalization of these structures and their incorporation into materials is undergoing in our research group.