Alkoxy- and thiolato-bridged Re
I molecular rec
tangles [{(CO)
3Re(
-ER)
2Re(CO)
3}
2(
-bpy)
2] (ER = SC
4H
9,
1a;SC
8H
17,
1b; OC
4H
9,
2a; OC
12H
25,
2b; bpy = 4,4'-bipyridine) exhibit st
rong interactions with several planar aromaticmolecules. The nature of their binding was studied by spectral techniques and verified by X-ray diffraction analysis.Standard absorption and fluorescence titrations showed that a relatively st
rong 1:1 interaction occurs betweenaromatic guests such as pyrene and these rec
tangles. The results of a single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysisshow that the recognition of
1 with a pyrene molecule is mainly due to CH···
interactions and the face of theguest pyrene is located over the edges of the bpy linkers of
1. This is a fairly novel example of an interaction thatis rarely designed into a host-guest pair. Furthermore, the interaction of
1 with Ag
+ results in the self-organizationof supramolecular arrays, as revealed by solid-state data.