Stepwise formation of organometallic macrocycles, prisms and boxes from Ir, Rh and Ru-based half-sandwich units.

Over the past decade, supramolecular compounds with organometallic Ir, Rh, Ru based half-sandwich complexes have received considerable attention as materials with a variety of potential applications. The major emphasis of this tutorial review lies on the self-assembly of such organometallic half-sandwich molecular rectangles, prisms and cages with half-sandwich corners and two different rigid bifunctional ligands using an approach of stepwise construction. Synthetic methods and the structural and functional properties of the target complexes are discussed in detail.