[curiouscat]

I was reading about this fascinatingly shaped molecule, "Olympiadane". Got me thinking, how do they ever prove they have actually made what they think they have made? I know MS / NMR as the usual tools but are they good enough to identify such complex molecules? (Unfortunately the original article is gated. )

Olympiadane is a mechanically-interlocked molecule composed of five interlocking macrocyles that resembles the Olympic rings. The molecule is a linear pentacatenane or a [5]catenane. It was synthesized and named by Fraser Stoddart and coworkers in 1994.[1] The molecule was designed without any practical use in mind,[2] although other catenanes may have possible application to the construction of a molecular computer.

[orgopete]

I doubt they proved it with an IR spectrum. I didn't read the paper either, but I will guess they had a pretty good idea from earlier steps as to what must have been happening, but I will guess they determined the structure by x-ray crystallography. This should be child's play today compared to doing DNA in 1953.

[AWK]

Stoddard proved the structure on the base of ¹H NMR and MS only.

David B. Amabilino, Peter R. Ashton, Anatoli S. Reder,  Neil Spencer,  J. Fraser Stoddart
Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English
Volume 33(12), 1286–1290, 1994