Abstract
Two anion receptors enhance liquid-liquid anion exchange when added to quaternary alkylammonium chloride anion exchangers, but with a striking dependence upon the structure of the alkylammonium cation. Two anion receptors were investigated, meso-octamethylcalix[4]pyrrole (C4P) and the bisthiourea tweezer 1,1'-(propane-1,3-diyl)bis(3-(4-sec-butylphenyl)thiourea (BTU). C4P has the unique ability in its cone anion-binding conformation to accept an appropriately sized electropositive species in the resulting cup formed by its four electron-rich pyrrole groups, while BTU is not expected to be predisposed for a specific host-guest interaction with the quaternary ammonium cations. It was therefore hypothesized that synergism between C4P and methyltri(C8,10)alkylammonium chloride (Aliquat® 336) would be uniquely pronounced owing to insertion of the methyl group of the Aliquat cation into the C4P cup, and we present herein data supporting this expectation. While synergism is comparatively weak for both exchangers with the BTU receptor, synergism between C4P and Aliquat 336 is indeed so strong that anion exchange prefers chloride over more extractable nitrate and trifluoroacetate, effectively overcoming the ubiquitous Hofmeister bias. A thermochemical analysis of synergistic anion exchange has been provided for the first time, unraveling the observed selectivity behavior and resulting in the estimation of binding constants for C4P with the ion pairs of A336+ with Cl–, Br–, OAcF3–, NO3–, and I–. The uniquely strong positive cooperativity between A336 and C4P underscores the advantage of a supramolecular approach in the design of synergistic anion exchange systems.
