Structural Polymorphism of Resorcinarene Assemblies

In 1997, a study based on X-ray crystallography revealed that resorcinarenes adopt a hexameric capsule-like structure. The function of resorcinarenes has been discussed on the basis of this structure; however, our recent study showed that the hexamer may be only one of resorcinarenes’ polymorphic members. Here, we present the solvent dependence of the aggregation number of C-undecylresorcinarene in water-saturated toluene and chloroform using small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering and analytical ultracentrifugation measurements. We found that a new octamer was formed in toluene where the eight resorcinarene units were placed at the vertices of a regular cube; this contrasts to the previous structure in chloroform, namely, a hexamer with the six resorcinarenes located at the vertices of a regular octahedron that has a cavity inside where chloroform molecules are pooled.