Despite the rise
of uranyl-organic rotaxane compounds along with
the prosperity of uranyl-organic frameworks, uranyl-based polyrotaxane
compounds with high nuclearity have been rarely reported. In this
work, a novel twofold nested uranyl polyrotaxane compound (1, [ (UO2)3O(OH)3(C4CA4@CB6)1.5]·[(UO2)(OH) (H2O) (C4CA4@CB6)0.5)]) with two different moieties, hexameric networks and
dimeric chains, has been synthesized from C4CN4@CB6 (L1) using C4N4@CB6
(L3) as the induction agent. It is worth noting that the hexameric
uranyl SBUs found here represent the highest nuclearity of uranyl
found by far in uranyl-organic rotaxane frameworks. When starting
from C4CN3@CB6, a positional isomer of C4CN4@CB6 (L2), compound 2 ([(UO2)(H2O)(NO3)(C4CA3@CB6)]·[(C4CA3@CB6)])
was obtained, which contains a one-dimensional polyrotaxane chain
linked by another set of noncoordinated C4CA3@CB6 motifs through hydrogen
bonding. Further characterization of compound 1 by fluorescence,
IR, and Raman spectra was performed to analyze the features of the
hexameric uranyl unit as well as dimeric unit. Meanwhile, the mechanism
for the formation of 1 and 2 has been proposed
by a comprehensive comparison with previously reported trimeric uranyl
polyrotaxane networks, suggesting the vital role of self-template
in the formation of uranyl-organic rotaxane frameworks, especially
for hexameric uranyl unit in 1.