Abstract
Deep cavitands, concave molecular containers, represent an important supramolecular host class that has been explored for a variety of applications ranging from sensing, switching, purification and adsorption to catalysis. A major limitation in the field has been the cavitand volume that is restricted by the size of the structural platform utilized (diameter approx. 7 Å). We here report the synthesis of a novel, unprecedentedly large structural platform, named acridane[4]arene (diameter approx. 14 Å), suitable for the construction of cavitands with volumes of up to 814 Å(3) . These megalo-cavitands serve as size-selective hosts for fullerenes with mM to sub-μM binding affinity for C(60) and C(70) . Furthermore, the selective binding of fullerene C(70) in the presence of C(60) was demonstrated.