An Adamantane Capsule and its Efficient Uptake of Spherical Guests up to 3 nm in Water.

Efficient uptake of small to large guests, with a large difference in relative size, is quite rare for synthetic host compounds. Herein we designed and prepared a micellar capsule, composed of bent amphiphiles bearing two adamantyl groups, as a new host with a well-defined nanostructure. Unlike previous covalent, coordination, and hydrogen-bonding hosts, the adamantane-based capsule displays unusual uptake abilities toward spherical molecules with small (∼0.6 nm in diameter; e.g., adamantane) to medium size (∼1 nm; e.g., fullerene) as well as large size (∼3 nm; i.e., metal-organic polyhedra (MOP)), where the size differences are up to 5-fold, in water. Moreover, the resultant MOP-uptaking capsule incorporates medium-sized molecules (e.g., perylene and eosin Y) into the polyhedral cavity to generate ternary core-shell structures.