Structure of the anionic host-guest complex
Scientists in the UK and China have encapsulated a bromine anion in a supramolecular cavity to make a compound that could act as a model for metal-/anion-doped TiO2. The model could be used to find ways to improve current TiO2-doped photovoltaic, photocatalytic and sensing devices.
Dominic Wright from the University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues, have incorporated a Br– anion into a polyoxotitanate host, in which there is only very weak bonding between the bromine and the surrounding titanium oxide shell. ‘As well as providing a model for the way in which anions like Br– are incorporated into TiO2, purely inorganic host-guest arrangements like this are rare in their own right,’ says Wright.
Read the full article in Chemistry World
Link to journal article
Encapsulation of a ‘naked’ Br− anion in a polyoxotitanate host
Yaokang Lv , Janina Willkomm , Alexander Steiner , Lihua Gan , Erwin Reisner and Dominic S. Wright
Chem. Sci., 2012, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C2SC20193C
