Prismarene: An Emerging Naphthol-Based Macrocyclic Arene

Abstract

Phenol-based macrocyclic arenes have been widely used in supramolecular chemistry, significantly enriching the toolbox of the field. In contrast, naphthol-based macrocyclic arenes are rather underdeveloped. Very recently, Gaeta and co-workers successfully synthesized such macrocycles (referred to as prism[n]arenes) with good guest-binding ability by reacting 2,6-dimethoxynaphthalene with paraformaldehyde under optimized conditions. In view of the simple synthesis and good host-guest chemistry, we anticipate that this macrocycle will find similar success and wide applications as the phenol-based macrocyclic arenes.

Keywords: host-guest chemistry; macrocycles; prismarenes; supramolecular chemistry.