Supramolecular Chemistry and Self-Assembly in Organic Materials Design

Organic materials naturally lend themselves to the crafting of structure and function using the strategies of self-assembly and supramolecular chemistry employed so effectively by biological systems. This perspective illustrates progress over the past two decades on self-assembly in materials chemistry through research on systems where function is directly linked to noncovalent interactions among molecules. The genesis of this approach in chemistry of materials involves the design of relatively simple structures using hydrogen bonding, π–π stacking, metal–ligand interactions, electrostatic forces, strong dipole–dipole association, hydrophobic forces, and steric repulsion. Gradually many new and exciting opportunities have emerged, such as supramolecular nanostructures that assemble into functional bulk materials and supramolecular polymers in which the motif of covalent connections among monomers is imitated by creating one-dimensional assemblies of an arbitrarily large set of molecules in both compositio...