Construction of multiferrocenyl metallacycles and metallacages via coordination-driven self-assembly: from structure to functions.

Recently, the construction of discrete multiferrocenyl organometallic structures via coordination-driven self-assembly has attracted considerable attention because of their interesting electrochemical properties and wide range of applications in the areas of organometallic chemistry, electrochemistry, and materials science. Coordination-driven self-assembly has proven to be a simple yet highly efficient approach for the preparation of various multiferrocenyl metallacycles and metallacages with predetermined shapes and sizes as well as the distribution and total number of ferrocenes. This review focuses on the recent progress in the construction of a variety of discrete multiferrocenyl metallacycles and metallacages via coordination-driven self-assembly. The characterization, the structure-related electrochemical properties, and the applications of these multiferrocenyl supramolecular architectures are also discussed.