New synthetic procedures for preparing rotaxanes [1] are appearing in the current literature [2] with ever-increasing regularity as a result of the attention [3] these mechanically interlocked molecules [4] are receiving because of their rapidly growing promise as molecular switches for developing devices [5] on the mesoscale and as linear motor-molecules for constructing artificial molecular machinery [6] on the nanoscale. One of the simplest recognition motifs that produces pseudorotaxanes, [7] complexes that are often the precursors of catenanes and rotaxanes, is the binding [8] of dialkylammonium ions with suitably large macrocycles, for example, dibenzo[24]crown-8. Although this motif has so far yielded rotaxanes by both the threading-followed-by-stoppering [9] and slippage [10] approaches, until now no rotaxanes based on the dialkylammonium ion have been synthesized using a clipping [11] protocol. Here, we report the template-directed synthesis [4c, 12] of a [2]rotaxane by a clipping approach under thermodynamic control and the subsequent conversion of the dynamic products into a kinetically stable [2]rotaxane which species thus provide unequivocal evidence that the delocalization of the p electrons is responsible for the C 2v cyclic structure, rendering the more metallic heterosystems aromatic. Schaefer and co-workers [16] recently performed theoretical studies on model heterocyclic three-membered ring systems related to the Ga 3 organometallic compounds and concluded that these systems were indeed also aromatic.Herein we extended the concept of aromaticity to the heterocyclic four-membered ring all-metal systems, XAl 3 À . We showed systematically the importance of the delocalization of the p electrons for the stability of the cyclic aromatic structure. Metallic systems can be aromatic when they are composed of heteroatoms, provided that the heteroatoms have similar electronegativities to the rest of atoms of the ring. However, if the heretoatoms differ substantially in their electronegativities, such as C in CAl 3 À , [14] the cyclic aromatic structure is no longer a minimum. [12] We initially optimized the geometries and calculated the frequencies of XAl 3 À by using analytical gradients with polarized split-valence basis sets (6-311 G*) for Al, Si and Ge in XAl 3 À , and the LANL2DZ basis sets (extending by additional two s, two p and one d functions resulting in (5s5p1d/4s4p1d) basis sets) and the relativistic effective core potentials for Al, Sn, and Pb in XAl 3 À , and a hybrid method known in the literature as B3LYP. Then we refined the geometries and calculated the frequencies at the second-order Mùller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) level. The two most stable planar cyclic and pyramidal structures were studied further by using the coupled-cluster method (CCSD(T)) with the same basis sets. The energies of the most stable structures were refined by using the CCSD(T) method, the more extended 6-311 G(2df) basis sets for Al, Si, and Ge, and (5s5p2d1f/4s4p2d1f) valent basis sets and relativi...