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Supramolecular chemistry

Phosphorus caged

Nature volume 460, pages 585–586 (2009)Cite this article

Violent criminals are imprisoned to keep them under control. Similarly, incarceration in a molecular jail stops white phosphorus from bursting into flames — but on release, it regains its fiery character.

White phosphorus — P4, one of two forms of the element — has earned a notorious reputation for being highly reactive. When it reacts slowly with oxygen, it merely glows; indeed, the words 'phosphorescence' and 'phosphorus' both originate from the Greek word for 'light-carrier'. But on exposure to high concentrations of oxygen (such as in air), phosphorus spontaneously ignites, burning fiercely to produce a great heat. Reporting in Science, Mal et al.1 describe a way to tame this fiery element. When its molecules are trapped in nanoscale 'flasks', white phosphorus becomes inert, and will no longer react even slowly with oxygen.

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Figure 1: Molecular prisons.
Figure 2: X-ray crystal structure of the host–guest complex, as obtained by Mal and colleagues1.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kenneth N. Raymond is in the Department of Chemistry, and in the Chemical Sciences Division, University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. raymond@socrates.berkeley.edu,

    Kenneth N. Raymond

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  1. Kenneth N. Raymond
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Raymond, K. Phosphorus caged. Nature 460, 585–586 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/460585a

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