In this review, we survey the diversity of structures and functions which are encountered in advanced self-assembled nanomaterials. We highlight their flourishing implementations in three active domains of applications: biomedical sciences, information technologies, and environmental sciences. Our main objective is to provide the reader with a concise and straightforward entry to this broad field by selecting the most recent and important research articles, supported by some more comprehensive reviews to introduce each topic. Overall, this compilation illustrates how, based on the rules of supramolecular chemistry, the bottom-up approach to design functional objects at the nanoscale is currently producing highly sophisticated materials oriented towards a growing number of applications with high societal impact.

The preparation of a dimannosyl[c2]daisy chain molecular machine containing an ammonium and a triazolium station is described. The both stretched and contracted states of the molecular machine can be obtained by variation of the pH, thus localizing the mannosyl stoppers closer or farther away.