Homochiral Emissive Λ8- and Δ8-[Ir8Pd4]16+ Supramolecular Cages

Synthetic self-assembly is a powerful technique for the bottom-up construction of discrete and well-defined polyhedral nanostructures resembling the spherical shape of large biological systems. In recent years, numerous Archimedean-shaped coordination cages have been reported based on the assembly of bent monodentate organic ligands containing two or more distal pyridyl rings and square-planar PdII ions. The formation of photoactive PdII metallamacrocycles and cages, however, remain rare. Here we report the first examples of emissive and homochiral supramolecular cages of the form [Ir8Pd4]16+. These cages provide a suitably sized cavity to host large guest molecules. Importantly, encapsulation and energy transfer have been observed between the blue-emitting NBu4[Ir(dFppy)2(CN)2] guest and the red-emitting Δ8-[Ir8Pd4]16+ cage