Metal ion-assisted assembly of one-dimensional polyrotaxanes incorporating cucurbit[6]uril

Abstract Three cucurbit[6]uril (CB[6])-based polyrotaxanes [Cu(H2 C6N4)(CB[6])]Cl4·12H2O (1), [Co(H2 C6N4)(CB[6])]Cl4·14H2O (2) and [Ag(C6N4)(CB[6])]NO3·7H2O (3) are prepared using N,N′-bis(4-pyridylmethyl)-1,6-hexanediamine (C6N4) threading into CB[6]'s and metal ions' assistance. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analyses reveal that polyrotaxanes 1, 2 and 3 all have 1D chain structure where 1 and 2 are linear and 3 has two shapes, linear and sawtooth, respectively. The effects of guest molecules, metal and counter ions as well as intermolecular weak interactions on the architectures of polyrotaxanes are discussed. Keywords: metal ioncucurbit[6]urilpolyrotaxanecrystal engineering Acknowledgement This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20071017).