Golden nanocrown

Held together by metal-metal bonds: A large ring containing 36 gold atoms

This release is available in German.

A giant, crown-like Au36 ring aggregate with continuous metal-metal contacts (see picture; gold(I) centers are in ball and stick representation) is formed by an Au(I)-Au(I) bonding interaction directed self-assembly.... Click here for more information.

Chinese researchers have recently made a “golden crown” with a diameter of only a few nanometers. It is a large ring-shaped molecule containing 36 gold atoms. The lords of the ring, a team of researchers from the Universities of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Nanjing report their unusual compound in the journal Angewandte Chemie: the molecular ring structure is held together exclusively by gold–gold bonds and is thus the largest ring system made of gold atoms produced to date.

Large molecular rings have fascinated chemists for over 40 years—ever since the discovery of crown ethers in 1967. The pioneers in this area, C. J. Pederson, J.-M. Lehn, and D. J. Cram received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery in 1987. In the meantime, large molecular ring systems have played an important role in the search for new functional materials and in nanotechnology. The synthesis of ring systems held together exclusively by metal–metal bonds has remained a challenge.