A novel sodium template approach for preparing tetraimine macrocyles of 2,6-diformyl-4-methylphenol and diamino derivatives

Abstract

A number of [2 + 2] tetraimine macrocycles were synthesised, employing sodium 2,6-diformyl-4-methylphenolate as a precursor to undergo Schiff base condensation with a series of diamino compounds. The resulting dinuclear sodium macrocyclic complexes have been spectroscopically characterised by IR, mass and 1H NMR spectra. The sodium ion here plays a unique template role in the formation of macrocycles with different sizes of cavity in comparison to the other common-used templates such as alkaline earth metal, transition metal and rare earth metal ions.