for the transformation and it may somewhat increase the local rigidity, it cannot explain the observed dramatic increase in the long-range connectivity (even beyond the point of the sol-gel transition in reaction 6) and the preferential disappearance of L-Al(O2CUBE)(OCUBE) over L-Al(OCUBE) 3 as observed by Al TQ/MAS NMR (Figure ). Therefore, a second, presumably more preferred pathway (Figure ) is proposed where the L-Al(O2CUBE)(OCUBE) center is attacked by a Me3SnO-group of a more distant CUBE, creating new long-range connectivity.