Covalent or coordination molecular cages are particularly interesting molecules when they incorporate an active cavity in molecular recognition or in chemical reactivity. The project consists in the synthesis and the study of a new type of molecular cage, built from two porphyrins linked together by covalent but flexible bonds and eight 3-pyridyl ligands (L) allowing a control of the size of the cavity by an external signal. The key-step in the cage synthesis is the formation of a template dimer in order to favour the covalent cage closing. Several metallic cations coordinated by the L moieties or a ditopic ligand such as DABCO coordinated between two metalloporphyrins have been used for the preorganization of a dimer. Once the latter compound formed, the polyether chains have been linked two-by-two by alkene metathesis. A crystallographic structure of the covalent cage complexing the DABCO has been obtained. Furthermore, the synthesized cage was demetallated and the DABCO removed, the conformation adopted by this molecule doesn’t change a lot from its precursor.
