XRD1 Highlights

Like a pearl in its shell – Xe single atom encapsulation

A structure able to sequester a noble gases under mild conditions of room temperature and low pressure is reported. The use of such structures let imagine widespread applications. Pizzi A. et al., Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, Vol. 58 - 41, pp. 14472-14476 (2019)

A cyclic hexapeptide with three pyridyl moieties connected to its backbone forms a hydrogen‐bonded dimer, which has demonstrated to tightly encapsulate a single xenon atom in void space. Synchrotron‐radiation single‐crystal XRD showed that the gas atom is located precisely at the centre of the sandwich‐like dimer, and the obtained molecular crystals of peptide dimers with encapsulated xenon can be manipulated in the open air at room temperature, with no gas release. Possible implementation is to provide a tool to construct supramolecular structures using the constraints of cyclic rings and their directional interactions to produce designed porous crystals. In the case realized here, the specificity is directed towards an elusive rare gas. In general, the suggested strategy is especially attractive

because the use of self‐assembling cyclic oligopeptides provides a simple strategy to construct porous materials using biocompatible building blocks. Retrieve Article Tight Xenon Confinement in a Crystalline Sandwich-like Hydrogen-Bonded Dimeric Capsule of a Cyclic Peptide  Pizzi A., Ozores , Calvelo , García-Fandiño R., Amorín M., Demitri N., Terraneo G., Bracco S., Comotti A., Sozzani P., Bezuidenhout Charl X., Metrangolo P., Granja Juan R. Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, Vol. 58 - 41, pp. 14472-14476 (2019) DOI: 10.1002/anie.201906599