Bidirectional regulation of halide binding in a heterometallic supramolecular cube.

The construction of organo-metallic supramolecular structures often relies on coordination driven selfassembly via metal-ligand interactions. We take advantage of a subset of this design strategy, which involves the stabilisation of a covalent imine bond through dative bond coordination to a metal ion, to create many synthetic capsules1. A stellated octahedron can be formed through a one pot synthesis of 62 building blocks, illustrating the power of integrative self-sorting in a bimetallic system (Scheme 1)2, and in a similar self-assembly process, a porphyrin-faced cube can be synthesised (Scheme 2)3.