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The manipulation of molecular motions to construct highly ordered supramolecular architectures from chaos in the solid state is considered to be far more complex and challenging in comparison to that in solution. In this work, a bottom-up molecular assembly approach based on a newly designed skeleton-trimmed pillar[5]arene analogue, namely the permethylated leggero pillar[5]arene MeP[5]L, is developed in the solid state. An amorphous powder of MeP[5]L can take up certain guest vapors to form various ordered linker-containing solid-state molecular assemblies, which can be further used to construct a thermodynamically favored linker-free superstructure upon heating. These approaches are driven by vapor-induced solid-state molecular motions followed by a thermally triggered phase-to-phase transformation. The intermolecular interactions play a crucial role in controlling the molecular arrangements in the resulting assemblies. This research will open new insights into exploring controllable molecular motions and assemblies in the solid state, providing new perspectives in supramolecular chemistry and materials.

Modulating intermolecular charge-transfer (ICT) interactions between specific donor and acceptor species in host-guest systems is a big challenge and full of research value in supramolecular chemistry and materials science. In this work, a strategy to modulate the supramolecular ICT interactions in the solid state is developed by compressing the binding cavity of a macrocyclic host named perethylated leaning pillar[6]arene (p-EtLP6). The solid-state ICT affinities of p-EtLP6 toward multi-types of electron-deficient planar guests could be significantly enhanced by transforming the macrocyclic backbone from the original para-bridged mode into a hybrid para- and meta-bridged isomeric form (m-EtLP6). X-ray single-crystal structural analyses incorporating theoretical calculation demonstrate that the improved ICT affinities are mainly attributed to the superior host-guest size fit arising from the compressed binding cavity in m-EtLP6 as compared with p-EtLP6.

Quaternary stereocenters are of great importance to the three-dimensionality and enhanced properties of new molecules, but the synthetic challenges in creating quaternary stereocenters greatly hinder their wide use in drug discovery, organic material design, and natural product synthesis. The asymmetric allylic alkylation (AAA) of allylic substrates has proven to be a powerful methodology for enantioselective formation of structure skeletons bearing single or more quaternary carbon centers in modern asymmetric organocatalysis. AAA has certain advantages in constructing the tetrasubstituted stereocenters, including but not limited to mild reactive conditions, effective reaction rates, new functional group introduction, and carbon chains length extension. This review outlines the key considerations in the application of AAA reactions and summarizes the recent progress of AAA reactions in the enantioselective synthesis of products containing quaternary stereocenters. Meanwhile, a detailed discussion of the AAA reactions such as ligands, scope of substrates, transformations and the general reaction mechanisms is also provided. We hope this review could stimulate further advances in much broader areas, including organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, C-H activation, and symmetrical pharmaceutical chemistry.

The separation of haloalkane isomers with distillation-free strategies is one of the most challenging research topics in fundamental research and also gave high guiding values to practical industrial applications. Here, this contribution provides a previously unidentified solid supramolecular adsorption material based on a leggero pillararene derivative BrP[5]L , which can separate 1-/2-bromoalkane isomers with near-ideal selectivity. Activated solids of BrP[5]L with interesting amorphous and nonporous features could adsorb 1-bromopropane and 1-bromobutane from the corresponding equal volume mixtures of 1-/2-positional isomers with purities of 98.1 and 99.0%, respectively. Single-crystal structures incorporating theoretical calculation reveal that the high selectivity originates from the higher thermostability of 1-bromoalkane–loaded structures compared to its corresponding isomer-loaded structures, which could be further attributed to the perfect size/shape match between BrP[5]L and 1-bromoalkanes. Moreover, control experiments using its counterpart macrocycle of traditional pillararene demonstrate that BrP[5]L has better adsorptive selectivity, benefiting from the intrinsic free-rotation phenylene subunit on its backbone.

An efficient and regio-divergent method for both the C2 arylation and C3 diazenylation of C2,C3-unsubstituted indoles with aryltriazenes was developed. At room temperature, both reactions were carried out with HPF6/ionic liquids (ILs) as the promoter. The C2 arylation and C3 diazenylation activated by HPF6/ILs show remarkable reactivity, which results in corresponding products with yields of up to 99%. Notably, the practicality of the protocol was further demonstrated via gram-scale operations, late-stage modification and the reusability of the ILs.

In this letter, an efficient one-pot asymmetric sequential reaction is achieved by organo/transition metal relay catalysis in constructing two consecutive C-C bonds, which involves enantioselective amino squaramide catalytic Mannich-type addition of pyrazolones to isatin-derived ketimines and a subsequent palladium catalyzed diastereoselective allylic alkylation of pyrazolones with allylic acetates. An array of novel pyrazolone-aminooxindole-propylene structural motifs are obtained in a high level of yield and with excellent enantio- and diastereoselectivity (up to 95% yield,20:1 dr,99% ee). This methodology features the formation of vicinal quarternary carbon-stereocenters, and the second all-carbon tetrasubstituted stereogenic center is induced by joint action of the achiral palladium catalysis and the chiral environment generated from the Mannich step. Moreover, the usefulness of this methodology is highlighted by converting the allylic product into the carbonyl compound.

Singular points (SPs) in fingerprint images have important applications in fingerprint recognition such as registration and classification. Reliable detection of SPs could sufficiently improve processing speed and performance of automatic fingerprint identification system. In this paper, an improved SPs detection method is proposed. We first present a new algorithm of fingerprint image segmentation using linear support vector machine. Then, we estimate the complex orientation field by multiple scales smoothing in the highest resolution and perform several heuristic rules to enhance the certainty map after complex filtering. Experiments conducted on FVC2002 databases demonstrate that the proposed method can detect SPs with high robustness and accuracy.