Self-assembly of indolocarbazole-containing macrocyclic molecules

A successful approach for the synthesis of indolocarbazole-containing macrocycles based upon pi-pi stacking preorganization of indolocarbazole planes and click-chemistry reactions has been developed. The macrocycles are able to form folded structures with the help of hydrogen-bonding and pi-pi stacking interactions. Two of the receptors were successfully characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Our results confirmed that they showed different interesting self-assembly with the anions due to the N-H center dot center dot center dot X- and the triazole C-H center dot center dot center dot X- hydrogen-bonding.