Silsesquioxane structures structural techniques

As shown in the previous sections, HTE techniques proved to be a powerful tool to identify leads and gain knowledge about the system under study, but they did not provide information about the actual silsesquioxane structures that were synthesised [46]. To gain such information, selected HTE leads need to be prepared on a conventional laboratory scale and characterised by appropriate analytical techniques (such as spectroscopy and chromatography) [45, 46, 48, 49]. Here, the results of the up-scaling of the synthesis of cyclopentyl silsesquioxanes in acetonitrile (Sections 9.2.2 and 9.2.3) and of the synthesis of tert-butyl silsesquioxanes in water (Section 9.2.4) are reported. 

By far the most studied applications of silsesquioxanes are based on the POSS structures. The open POSS cubes of the type R7Si709(0H)3 as weU as silanol group containing closed cage structures such as R7Si70i2Si0H are applied as molecular models of the silica surfaces. This is of particular interest in studies regarding the catalytic activity of immobilized transition metal complexes. The silsesquioxanes mimic the surface of silica supports on a molecular scale, which makes them interesting due to the fact that routine chemical analytic techniques such as liquid... 

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