Solvent extraction studies of silver by spherical ligands incorporating aromatic subunits

Different kinds of macrocycles on the basis of aromatic building blocks wer e synthesised and their extraction behaviour towards silver and selected ot her metal ions was studied in the system metal salt-picric acid-H2O/ligand- chloroform. The investigations give a clear dependence of both extraction s electivity and structure of extracted complexes on number and type of donor sites and ligand architecture. Relevant molecular modelling studies of lig ands and their silver complexes were used to interpret the solvent extracti on data and to deduce structure-extractability relationships.