Supramolecular chemistry

The discovery of crown ethers in the 1960s awakened interest in studying weak and non-covalent molecular interactions, which are typical for supramolecular chemistry. Since then supramolecular chemistry has matured into a research field in its own right. Nowadays, important concepts that have been demonstrated by supramolecular chemistry include molecular self-assembly, self-sorting and recognition, templated synthesis or host-guest chemistry. These concepts have made supramolecular synthesis a powerful tool to construct large and complex chemical architecture from simple building blocks or to develop functional supramolecules. Among these are molecular switches, logic gates, molecular containers, elevators, valves and springs, supramolecular catalysts and many more. This exciting progress has been accompanied by a development of new methods which are able to monitor the sometimes quite fast dynamics of supramolecular systems.