Synthesis towards spherical molecules

Highly symmetric molecules have fascinated scientists in organic chemistry since this research field was established in the middle of the 19th century. Not only because of unknown physical behavior upon perturbation of the electronic shell of such highly ordered compounds, but also overcoming the synthetic challenges by finding appropriate strategies for these extraordinary molecular architectures provides this work a unique character.
This work is divided in two parts A and B, whereby part A focuses on the aimed synthesis of spherical shaped molecules, called spherophanes. The closest known molecule which was synthesized is buckminsterfullerene C60, reported in the 1980s. Part B describes the approach towards a square pyramidal shaped cage molecule, which combines the hemisphere of a calix[4]arene unit with a flat porphyrin.
Part A: The novelty of synthesizing and isolating this sort of spherical molecules with rigid Ar-bridge-Ar units and hence unpredictable physical behavior was addressed in a variety of t