“…Tables of effective ionic radii (Shannon, 1976;Greenwood & Earnshaw, 1997) suggested that a Ni 2+ ion should fit inside the crown, but we found little precedent for such coordination. A survey of version 5.29 (November 2007plus January 2008 of the Cambridge Structural Database (Allen, 2002; hereafter the CSD) located coordinates for four structures (refcodes XEMGAX, XEMGEB, XEMGIF, XEMGOL; Steed et al, 2001) containing Ni 2+ , 15-crown-5, water and a simple counterion (NO 3 À , Br À or ClO 4 À ), but the Ni 2+ ion is not coordinated by the macrocycle in any of them. One entry {BIHFED; [Ni(EtOH) 2 (15C5)](PF 6 ) 2 ; Simonsen et al, 1982} does show a diagram with a Ni 2+ ion located inside the crown, but the reference is to a conference abstract, no coordinates are archived, R = 0.091, and it seems that no full structure report was ever published.…”