Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.140, No.1, 66-69, 2018
Titanium-Oxide Host Clusters with Exchangeable Guests
A novel family of water-soluble, polyoxocationic titanium-oxide host-guest clusters are reported herein. They exhibit an unprecedented hexagonal prismatic core structure for hosting univalent cationic guests like K+, Rb+, Cs+ and H3O+. Guest exchange has been studied using Cs-133 NMR, showing the flexible pore of a host permits passage of a comparatively larger cation and giving an equilibrium constant of ca. 13 for displacing Rb+ by Cs+. Attractive ion-dipole interaction, depending on host?guest size complementarity, plays a dominant role for the preferential encapsulation of larger alkali-metal cationic guests.