With the intention of culminating in the synthesis of a molecular knot, this thesis explores techniques which are useful for future workers to solve this problem. Several curcumin analogues have been synthesized, and some of them have been applied to complex to octahedral metal ions which act as templates. The metal complexes were shown to have the problem of decomposing too early to be useful.
Then the organic molecule cyanuric chloride was used instead of a metal ion as the central core (template). It proves that intermediate compounds in the process of making the knot are unstable for future reactions. The ligands which are supposed to tie the knot are too floppy to connect in the desired way. Consequently, the results reported in this thesis point out the problems and pitfalls rather than providing solutions to the problem of making a molecular knot.