Template Synthesis of Metal Nanoparticles within Organic Cages

Several recent reports have outlined the controlled synthesis of metal nanoparticles (M-NPs) using organic cages as templates. These porous organic cages offer closed shells to protect encapsulated M-NPs from the surrounding chemical environment and modulate their nucleation and growth to form M-NPs with narrow size distributions. As a result, by tuning the shapes and sizes of organic cages, various discrete and well-defined M-NPs can be obtained easily. These well-defined M-NPs show good stability and high catalytic reactivity in a wide range of important reactions.