Sensors and Switches from Supramolecular Chemistry

摘要

Molecular recognition is one of the corner stones of supramole-Vcular chemistry. Given any substrate (molecule, cation, or anion), the supramolecular approach is that an appropriate receptor, possessing structural and chemical features suitable for substrate recognition, can be designed. The keyword is shape. This concept is illustrated in Figure 1. Synthetic chemists have addressed the challenge of designing and building concave receptors having shapes and dimensions suitable for hosting any kind of substrate and the ability of establishing with the substrate interactions of a sufficient energy (e.g. hydrogen bonds or π-interactions for a molecule; coordina-tive interactions for a metal ion; electrostatic interactions for an anion)