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Supramolecular chemistry

Phosphorus caged

Nature volume 460, pages 585–586 (2009)Cite this article

Violent criminals are imprisoned to keep them under control. Similarly, incarceration in a molecular jail stops white phosphorus from bursting into flames — but on release, it regains its fiery character.

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Figure 1: Molecular prisons.
Figure 2: X-ray crystal structure of the host–guest complex, as obtained by Mal and colleagues1.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kenneth N. Raymond is in the Department of Chemistry, and in the Chemical Sciences Division, University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. raymond@socrates.berkeley.edu,

    Kenneth N. Raymond

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  1. Kenneth N. Raymond
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Raymond, K. Phosphorus caged. Nature 460, 585–586 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/460585a

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