Rhenium-Carbonyl-Based Supramolecular Coordination Complexes: Synthesis, Structure and Properties

The facial-Re(CO)(3) core based supramolecular coordination complexes represent a unique class of functional 2D and 3D metallacycles possessing advantages such as high stability, one-step synthesis, clean products and good solubility. Most of these metallacycles display interesting photophysical and redox properties leading to their applications in host-guest chemistry, photo-catalysis, biological activity and functional molecular devices. This review presents a comprehensive survey of reported Re-based metallacycles describing the development of synthetic methodologies, properties, applications and future prospects.