Copper cages

Scheme 48 The hydrogen-bonded directed photodimerisation of 100 yields 102 which is a good ligand for the formation of an hexa-copper cage compound... 

The largest copper cage is a hexadecanuclear cage reported by Kliifers and Schnmacher, which is stabilized by deprotonated sorbitol. The structure contains a wheel of copper centers held together by alkoxides derived from the poly-ol. As with the Fe cage discussed in Section 7.3.2.4 above, this extraordinary structure has not led to a greater exploitation of poly-ols as ligands in this chemistry. 

Reaction of [Ag(N03)(/i-dppa)] (80) with KCl and excess dppa was reported to give the di-silver cage [(AgCl)2(/i-dppa)3] 131e (Fig. 2.53) in seeming contrast to the reactions with KBr and KI that result in polymer 82 (Sect. 2.3.2 Fig. 2.27), but the evidence is solely based on elemental analyses, which are identical for the cage and polymeric structure and their resemblance with copper cages 124 [86]. 

---