This review highlights the past six year advances in the blossoming field of cucurbit[n]uril chemistry. Because of their exceptional recognition properties in aqueous medium, these pumpkin-shaped macrocycles have been generating some tremendous interest in the supramolecular community. They have also become key units in various self-organizing and stimulus-controlled assemblies, as well as in advanced materials and drug carriers. The scope of this review is limited to the main family of cucurbit[n]urils (n = 5, 6, 7, 8, 10). The reader will find an overview of their preparation, their physicochemical and biological properties, as well as their recognition abilities towards various organic and inorganic guests. Detailed thermodynamic and kinetic considerations, as well as multiple applications including supramolecular catalysis are also discussed.

Cucurbituril chemistry: a tale of supramolecular success

The Synthesis and Ion Bindings of Synthetic Multidentate Macrocyclic Compounds.

In our developing world, carbon dioxide has become one of the most abundant greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is a stable, inert, small molecule that continues to present significant challenges toward its chemical activation as a useful carbon end product. This tutorial review describes one approach to the reduction of carbon dioxide to carbonfuels, using cobalt and nickel molecular catalysts, with particular focus on studying the thermodynamics and kinetics of CO2 binding to metal catalytic sites.

Thermodynamics and kinetics of CO2, CO, and H+ binding to the metal centre of CO2 reduction catalysts.

Selective functionalization of unactivated C-H bonds and ammonia production are extremely important industrial processes. A range of metalloenyzmes achieve these challenging tasks in biology by activating dioxygen and dinitrogen using cheap and abundant transition metals, such as iron, copper and manganese. High-valent iron-oxo and -nitrido complexes act as active intermediates in many of these processes. The generation of well-described model compounds can provide vital insights into the mechanism of such enzymatic reactions. Advances in the chemistry of model high-valent iron-oxo and -nitrido systems can be related to our understanding of the biological systems.

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C. K. Poon

Papers

Complexes of Cobalt(III) with a Cyclic Tetradentate Secondary Amine

Peroxo Complexes of Cobalt(III) with a Cyclic Quadridentate Secondary Amine