Guest binding and catalysed reactions in the cavity of a coordination cage

Self -assembled coordination cages (hollow metal/ligand capsules) have the ability to encapsulate small molecule guests in the central cavity. In this talk is presented a coordination cage with a very well developed host guest chemistry, for which the factors responsible for guest binding have been dissected in detail to the extent that guest binding can be quantitatively predicted. The combination of b inding of hydrophobic guests in the cage cavity in water, and accumulation of anions around the positively -charged cage surface by ion -pairing, has led to his catalytic rate enhancements for reactions of cavity -bound guests with surface -bound anions. As g uest binding and ion -pairing are based on orthogonal interactions, this affords a system capable in principle of quite general bimolecular catalysis of reactions of electrophiles with anions.