Covalent ladder formation becomes kinetically trapped beyond four rungs

Erin L. Elliott, C. Scott Hartley, and Jeffrey S. Moore*
Chem. Commun. 2011, 47, 5028–5030
[Published version]

Abstract

Scrambling experiments suggest that the self-assembly of 2D ladders viaimine metathesis is kinetically trapped at four or more rungs. Consequently, ladders containing five or more rungs cannot be synthesized in high yield under the conditions used, as misaligned out-of-register byproducts cannot self-correct.