Abstract
Synthetic self-assembly is a powerful technique for the bottom-up construction of discrete and well-defined polyhedral nanostructures resembling the spherical shape of large biological systems. In recent years, numerous Archimedean-shaped coordination cages have been reported based on the assembly of bent monodentate organic ligands containing two or more distal pyridyl rings and square-planar Pd(II) ions. The formation of photoactive Pd(II) metallamacrocycles and cages, however, remain rare. Here we report the first examples of emissive and homochiral supramolecular cages of the form [Ir(8) Pd(4) ](16+) . These cages provide a suitably sized cavity to host large guest molecules. Importantly, encapsulation and energy transfer have been observed between the blue-emitting NBu(4) [Ir(dFppy)(2) (CN)(2) ] guest and the red-emitting Δ(8) -[Ir(8) Pd(4) ](16+) cage.