Heteroleptic Tripalladium(II) Cages

There is a concerted attempt to develop self-assembled metallo-cages of greater structural complexity, and heteroleptic Pd-II cages are emerging as prime candidates in these efforts. Most of these are dinuclear: few examples of higher nuclearity have been reported. We demonstrate here a robust method for the formation of tripalladium(II) cages from the 2 : 3 : 3 combination of a tritopic ligand, Pd-II, and a selection of ditopic ligands of the correct size and geometry.