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An imine in weak acid is hydrolyzed very rapidly, however, it is completely stable when encapsulated within cucurbit[7]uril (CB7). 

A binary mixture of mesoporous silica nanoparticles plus organic polyammonium additive (dye or drug) is cleanly converted upon mild heating into hollow nanoparticles. The remodeled nanoparticle shell is an organized nanoscale assembly of globular additive/silica subunits and cancer cell assays show that a loaded drug additive is bioavailable. 

Co-crystal engineering is a promising method to create new classes of advanced materials. Co-crystal structure prediction is more challenging when one or more of the lattice constituents (tectons) are flexible molecules. This study reports four co-crystals that were prepared by mixing HAuCl 4 or HAuBr 4 with C 3 -symmetric tectons based on a 1,3,5-(methylacetamide)benzene scaffold. X-ray analysis of the co-crystals revealed the presence of three dominant supramolecular interactions; (a) hydrogen bonding between tecton amide NH residues and the AuX 4 − anion, (b) electrostatic stacking of the Au center against the tecton's π-electrons, (c) very short hydrogen bonds within a proton-bridged-carbonyls motif. Within all four co-crystals, the sterically-geared tecton was trapped in a high energy molecular conformation, which increased the number of favorable intermolecular interactions in the lattice. We infer from the results that the likelihood of high energy molecular conformations within a co-crystal increases if there are multiple dominant intermolecular interactions. Application of this generalizable rule should lead to improved crystal structure prediction.