Deliberate boxes and accidental wheels.

This report describes systems which combine the structural and reactive motifs of a dinucleating terpyridine-aminomethylpyridine ligand, L, with the coordination preferences and flexibilities of particular divalent metal ions to form a series of closely related box structures in a deliberate fashion. The ligand also produces unprecedented decanickel wheel complexes. Halogen to aromatic hydrogen interactions may be important in stabilising the decanickel wheel structures.