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Organic cage crystals

Supramolecular joinery

Attempts to create a porous molecular crystal by removing solvent molecules from a solvate usually lead the host to reorganize into a non-porous close-packed structure. The 'virtual porosity' of such an organic cage crystal has now been trapped by introducing a judiciously chosen co-crystal former that prevents rearrangement of the host lattice.

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Figure 1: Preservation of interstitial space by co-crystal formation.

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Correspondence to Leonard J. Barbour.

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Barbour, L. Supramolecular joinery. Nature Chem 7, 97–99 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2166

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