Molecular clips and tweezers with corannulene pincers

Application of the synthetic methodology developed in our laboratory yields molecular clips and tweezers with corannulene pincers and cyclooctadiene or cyclooctatetraene tethers. These highly nonplanar systems possess a potential for binding guest molecules of various sizes. One of the clips, bis(benzocorannulene)[a,e]cyclooctadiene, exists in a 'open' chair conformation encapsulating solvating nitrobenzene in the solid state, while it is expected to prefer an internally pi-pi stacked twist-boat conformation in the gas phase. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.