Cyclo[n]carbons and catenanes from different perspectives: disentangling the molecular thread

Abstract

All-carbon atomic rings, cyclo[n]carbons, have recently attracted vivid attention of experimentalists and theoreticians. Among them, cyclo[18]carbon is the most studied system. In this paper, we summarize and review various properties of cyclo[n]carbons, emphasising the aspects of their aromaticity/antiaromaticity. In the first part, the trends in bonding patterns and selected aromaticity indices with the increasing size of the rings are discussed. In the second part we explore the properties of catenane models based on interlocked cyclo[18]carbon rings from different perspectives and investigate their behaviour under the action of external force using computational experiments.