Synthesis of Large [2+3] Salicylimine Cages with Embedded Metal‐Salphen Units.

Metal salphen containing complexes have found a broad variety of applications in catalysis as well as material science. Most of these materials are either mono‐nuclear complexes or polymeric network materials. Discrete macromolecular polynuclear salphens are still rare and mostly two‐dimensional structures. Here we present three‐dimensional trinuclear Ni(II)‐ and Pt(II)‐cage compounds with a covalently bound [2+3] salicylimine cage backbone. The solubility of the cages allowed their investigation by spectroscopic methods. Furthermore, the Pt(II) derivative was investigated by single crystal X‐ray structure analysis revealing that the presented cage compounds possess the largest intrinsic void of metal salphen cages reported till date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]