Self-assembled flower structures formed by C3-symmetric aromatic carboxylic acids with meta-carboxyl groups.

In this study, two kinds of C3-symmetric hexacarboxylic acids containing three pairs of meta-carboxyl groups self-assembled into similar flower structures with two different sizes of cavities. The bi- and tri-component host-guest systems were built to show no molecular selectivity for the guest molecule COR in the co-assembly process.