Edwin Constable and colleagues at the University of Basel, Switzerland have reported the intercalation of a fullerene molecule into a network containing octahedral nickel nodes. Using a layering technique, crystals of 1,2-dichlorobenzene and fullerene templated nickel coordination networks were grown and characterised by IR spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction. The encapsulation of fullerene results in the assembly of [3 + 3] macrocycles, connected into 2-dimensional sheets through the nickel nodes and fullerene-free [6 + 6] macrocycles.
Read the full paper to find out more, and to see the pretty structures!
Bucky-blocks: templating a coordination network with C60
Edwin C. Constable, Guoqi Zhang, Catherine E. Housecroft and Jennifer A. Zampese
CrystEngComm, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06156B
