The Origination of Photoresponsive Crown Ethers

In this chapter, we introduce the concept of the molecular design of several sensing or switching systems for selected ions and molecules, focusing particularly on our own recent research achievements. 

Photoresponsive systems are seen ubiquitously in nature, and light is intimately associated with the subsequent life processes. In these systems, a photoantenna to capture a photon is neatly combined with a functional group to mediate some subsequent events. Important is the fact that these events are frequently linked with photoinduced structural changes in the photoantennae. This suggests that chemical substances that exhibit photoinduced structural changes may serve as potential candidates for the photoantennae. To date, such photochemical reactions as E/Z isomerism of azobenzenes, dimerization of anthracenes, spiropyran-merocyanine interconversion, and others have been exploited in practical photoantennae. It may be expected that if one of these photoantennae were adroitly combined with a crown ether, it would then be possible to control many crown ether family physical and chemical functions by means of an ON/OFF photoswitch. This is the basic concept underlying the designing of photoresponsive crown ethers. We believe that this is one of the earliest examples of molecular machines . 

Photodimerization of anthracene is also usable as a photochemical switch to create photoresponsive crown ethers. Photoirradiation of 3 in the presence of Li+ gives the photocycloisomer 4.[5,61 Compound 4 is fairly stable in the presence of Li+, but readily reverts to the open form 3 when Li+ is removed from the ring. 

In this system, however, intermolecular dimerization may take place competitively with intramolecular dimerization. To rule out this possibility, compound 5, in which two anthracenes are linked by two polyether chains, was synthesized.171 It was found that intramolecular photodimerization proceeds rapidly in the presence of Na+ as the template metal cation. Compound 6 was also synthesized.181 Although this compound has not been applied in a photoswitch system, it displays a remarkable fluorescence change upon binding with RbC104 or H3N+(CH2)7NHj.[81 Yama-shita et al.[9] also synthesized 7, in which intermolecular photodimerization of anthracene is completely suppressed. The photochemically produced cyclic form 8 displayed excellent Na+ selectivity. 

Shinkai et al.111-151 synthesized a series of azobis(benzocrown ethers) called butterfly crown ethers , of which compounds 9 and 10 are examples. Their photoresponsive molecular motion resembles that of a flying butterfly. It was found that the proportion of their Z forms at the photostationary state increases remarkably with increasing concentration of Rb+ and Cs+, which interact with two crown rings in a 1 2 sandwich fashion. This is clearly due to the bridge effect of the metal cations with the two crowns, results that support the view that the Z forms make an intramolecular 1 2 complex with these metal cations. As expected, the Z forms extracted alkali metal cations with large ion radii more efficiently than did the corresponding E forms. In particular, the photoirradiation effect on 9 is quite remarkable for example, ( )-9 (n= 2) extracts Na+ 5.6 times more efficiently than (Z)-9 (n= 2), whereas (Z)-9(n= 2) extracts K+ 42.5 times more efficiently than ( )-9(n= 2). l  

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