Aurophilicity-Mediated Construction of Emissive Porous Molecular Crystals as Versatile Hosts for Liquid and Solid Guests.

The first examples of porous molecular crystals that are assembled through Au⋅⋅⋅Au interactions of gold complex 1 are here reported along with their exchange properties with respect to their guest components. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses indicate that the crystal structure of 1/CH2 Cl2 ⋅pentane is based on cyclic hexamers of 1, which are formed through six Au⋅⋅⋅Au interactions. The packing of these cyclic hexamers affords a porous architecture, in which the one-dimensional channel segment contains CH2 Cl2 and pentane as guests. These guests can be exchanged through operationally simple methods under retention of the host framework of 1, which furnished 1/guest complexes with 26 different guests. A single-crystal XRD analysis of 1/eicosane, which contains the long linear alkane eicosane (n-C20 H42 ), successfully provided its accurately modeled structure within the porous material. These host-guest complexes show chromic luminescence with both blue- and redshifted emissions. Moreover, this porous organometallic material can exhibit luminescent mechanochromism through release of guests.