Hierarchically Porous Organic Cages

Abstract

Imparting mesopores to organic cages of an intrinsic microporous nature to build up hierarchically porous cage soft materials is a grand challenge and will reshape the property and application scope of traditional organic cage molecules. Herein, we discovered how to engineer mesopores into microporous organic cages via their host–guest interactions with long chain ionic surfactants. Equally important, the ionic head of surfactants equips the supramolecularly assembled porous structures with charge‐selective uptake and release function in solution. Interestingly, such hierarchically porous organic cage can serve as a nanoreactor once trapping enzymes within the cavity, which show 5‐fold enhanced activity of enzymatic catalysis when compared with the free enzymes.

Active Regulation of Supramolecular Chirality through Integration of CdSe/CdS Nanorods for Strong and Tunable Circular Polarized Luminescence

“…We first took molecule 1 as an example to illustrate the chiral assembly. Self-assembly of ( S )- 1 or ( R )- 1 molecules was realized through an emulsion droplet confined strategy. ,, Typically, 1 mL of ( R )- 1 CHCl 3 solution (5 × 10 –5 g, 6.7 × 10 –8 mol) was mixed with 2 mL of cationic surfactant aqueous solution (dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide, DTAB, 10 g L –1 ) to result in oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions after vortex mixing (1000 rpm, 60 s). These micrometer-sized oil droplets dispersed in water could serve as compartmentalized “microreactors” for the self-assembly, which have several remarkable features including (i) high colloidal stability and dispersity in water after assembly, (ii) a continuous shrinkage of the emulsion droplets in a drying droplet could provide additional force for the assembly, and (iii) coassembly of two or more distinct building blocks is feasible when they are soluble in the oil droplets, providing an ideal platform for studying the interactions between two dissimilar matter, such as molecular and nanoparticulate objects.…”

Purely Covalent Molecular Cages and Containers for Guest Encapsulation

“…The properties of these materials open up new avenues to develop electrostatic gates based on surfactants by incorporating additional properties, such as pH-switchable behavior. The authors also used these systems to encapsulate an enzyme in the CC3 –surfactant porous colloid to display greater catalytic activity compared to the free enzyme …”

“…Hierarchically assembled porous colloids based on cages CC3 . Adapted with permission from ref . Copyright 2021 Wiley-VCH.…”

N-heterocyclic carbene-stabilized metal nanoparticles within porous organic cages for catalytic application

“…In recent years, porous organic cages with intrinsic inner cavities and tunable surfaces have emerged as a new class of microporous material with promising applications in recognition [ 1 ], molecular separation [ 2 ] and catalysis [ 3 ]. Differently to other porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks and zeolites [ 4 , 5 ], porous organic cages exhibit intriguing features, including structural tunability, thermal and chemical stability, and unique solution processability, making them prominent candidates for encapsulating diverse metal nanoparticles (MNPs) within their nanoporous cavities [ 6–13 ]. MNPs possess high surface area/volume ratios with many active catalytic sites, giving them exceptional catalytic activity compared with their metal counterparts [ 14 ].…”