Trapping in situscission products of C–O ester bonds by unique coordination supramolecular architecturesElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Syntheses of 1,2-BAB, 1,3-BAB, 1, 2, 3 and 4; IR spectra, Figures and crystal data of complexes 1, 2, 3and 4. CCDC reference numbers 711394–711397. For ESI and crystallographic data in CIF or other electronic format see DOI: 10.1039/b904387j

Various decomposition products of C–O ether bond cleavage have been trapped in supramolecular architectures as templates based on hydrothermal reaction of three-component metal–carboxylate–phen, which not only results in the formation of [5]pseudorotaxane structure, 3D porous framework and supramolecular structure, but also provides directly crystallographic evidence to explain how the C–O ether bond breaks during decomposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]