Synthesis of Large [2+3] Salicylimine Cages with Embedded Metal-Salphen Units

Abstract

Metal salphen containing complexes have found a broad variety of applications in catalysis as well as material science. Most of these materials are either mono-nuclear complexes or polymeric network materials. Discrete macromolecular polynuclear salphens are still rare and mostly two-dimensional structures. Here we present three-dimensional trinuclear Ni(II)- and Pt(II)-cage compounds with a covalently bound [2+3] salicylimine cage backbone. The solubility of the cages allowed their investigation by spectroscopic methods. Furthermore, the Pt(II) derivative was investigated by single crystal X-ray structure analysis revealing that the presented cage compounds possess the largest intrinsic void of metal salphen cages reported till date.