The Honeysuckle and the Bindweed Revisited: Synthesis and Stereochemistry of Extended Helical Structures from Coordination Complexes

We report structural studies of a chiral tridentate ligand which forms helical cubanes with cobalt(II) and manganese(II). A quadruple helicate with (P)-chirality is obtained using a (S)-ligand with cobalt(II) but the ligand binds manganese(II) in one of two possible orientations and either (P)- or (M)-quadruple helicates may be observed for a given ligand enantiomer. The helicates may be linked into extended structures by p-nitrobenzoate capping ligands which show stacking interactions with neighbouring complexes. With cobalt(II) we find an extended helical structure with (M)-chirality linking helicates which themselves have (P)-chirality. With manganese(II) we observe a remarkable structure with extended (M)-helices coexisting with extended (P)-helices.