Calix[n]arene-Based Coordination Cage and Its Application to Electrocatalysis

The calixarene-based ligand—4-tert-butylsulfonylcalix[4]arene has the capacity of coordinating with various metal cations either individually by itself or together with various carboxylate/thiol-containing coligands. Interestingly, different types of metal cations, various counterions and variable solvents not only generated diverse coordinated cages with special morphology and topology, but also provided a tool in controlling their various porosities, hierarchical architectures, and physiochemical properties. Particularly, those calixarene-based coordinated cages with different porous structures, properly sized hierarchical cage/cavity-like spaces, as well as selected active elemental components greatly promoted applications to electrocatalytic reactions such as hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction and oxygen reduction reaction. In this chapter, we not only summarized and discussed the preparation of calixarene-based coordinated cages and their applications to electrocatalysis, but also provided academic and industrial concerns and suggestions in future researches.