Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China

This paper describes the dynamic covalent assembly of three mono-, bi- and trimacrocycles by utilizing hydrogen bonding-driven zigzag anthranilamides as “leading” components. The monomacrocycle, a tetraamino molecule, was prepared from the [2＋2] coupling reaction of a “U”-shaped dialdehyde and a porphyrin diamine, followed by the reduction of the macrocyclic tetraimine by NaBH3CN, while the bi- and trimacrocycles were obtained through two six-component coupling reactions with rigid tri- and tetraamino-appended oligomers as templates.