Switchable cages - Self-assembly of molecular Archimedean polyhedra

Chemists truly went back to the drawing board to develop new X-shaped organic building blocks that can be linked together by metal ions to form an Archimedean cuboctahedron. They report that by changing the concentration or using different counterions, the cuboctahedron can be reversibly split into two octahedra - an interesting new type of fusion?fission switching process.