A Hexadecacationic Metal-Organic Cage for Anchoring Sulfonates: High-Order Binding of Di- and Trisulfonates and High-Performance Removal of Perfluorosulfonates from Water.

ABSTRACT: Developing synthetic hosts capable of binding sulfonate anions or sequestering perfluorosulfonates is highly important. In this work, the self-assembly of a tripyridinium-tricarboxylate ligand with Cp₂ZrCl₂ (Cp = η⁵-C₅H₅) is reported, yielding a highly cationic tetrahedral cage (1) engineered with acidic C-H protons. The hexadecacationic cage binds a variety of sulfonate anions with unprecedented charge-discriminative phenomena: the cage binds monosulfonates in fast exchange on the NMR timescale, while di- and multisulfonates exhibit slow-exchange binding. In particular, high-capacity complexation of di- and trisulfonates by 1 is achieved, with the pronounced case of 1 accommodating three dianions. Molecular modeling suggests the exist

SUBMITTER: Liu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12767059 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature