Stimuli-responsive supramolecular gels through hierarchical self-assembly of discrete rhomboidal metallacycles.

A new class of supramolecular organometallic gels with a discrete rhomboidal metallacycle as the main skeleton was fabricated through hierarchical self-assembly (see figure). More importantly, by taking advantage of the dynamic nature of metal-ligand bonds, the stimuli-responsive gel-sol transition of the obtained gels was realized by disassembly and reassembly of the rhomboidal scaffold as controlled by bromide anions.