abstract
The interaction between imidazolium cations and coordinating anions is investigated through the anion-templated assembly of interpenetrated and interlocked structures. The orientation of the imidazolium motif with respect to anion binding, and hence the hydrogen bond donor arrangement, was varied in acyclic receptors, interpenetrated assemblies, and the first mono-imidazolium interlocked systems. Their anion recognition properties and co-conformations were studied by solution-phase H-1 NMR investigations, solid-state structures, molecular dynamics simulations, and density functional theory calculations. Our findings suggest that the imidazolium-anion binding interaction is dominated by electrostatics with hydrogen-bonding contributions having weak orientational dependence.
keywords
IONIC LIQUIDS; HYDROGEN-BONDS; ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURE; RECEPTORS; BINDING; DRIVEN; CATION; SPECTROSCOPY; RECOGNITION; CHLORIDE
subject category
Chemistry
authors
Spence, GT; Serpell, CJ; Sardinha, J; Costa, PJ; Felix, V; Beer, PD
our authors
Paulo Jorge Ferreira de Matos Costa
Post-doc Fellowship
Vítor Félix
Associate Professor with Aggregationacknowledgements
G.T.S. thanks the EPSRC for a studentship (EP/F011504. C.J.S. thanks the EPSRC and Johnson Matthey for a CASE studentship and the EPSRC for a PhD+ award. P.J.C. thanks FCT for the postdoctoral grant SFRH/BPD/27082/2006. V. F. acknowledges the financial support from FCT under the project PTDC/QUI/68582/2006 with co-participation of the European Community funds FEDER, QREN, and COMPETE. We are grateful to Diamond Light Source for the award of beamtime (MT1880/MT1858) and to the beamline scientists for their assistance, and we acknowledge Oxford Chemical Crystallography for use of their instruments.