Supramolecular Redox Transduction: Macrocyclic Receptors for Organic Guests

Abstract

I sincerely thank all the authors who have contributed their chapters to this book. These contributions have allowed a wide coverage of fields within organic molecular engineering, hopefully of interest to both experts and nonexperts in the field.I would also like to thank valuable feedback from students who have read some parts of the book, in particular, the students who have followed my course in supramolecular chemistry. With its wide coverage, it is indeed my hope that this book will be useful as a textbook for courses in organic, supramolecular, and macromolecular chemistry.M.B.N.

Metal-driven self-assembly: the case of redox-active discrete architectures

“…From this point of view, and as shown through various examples in this article, a key issue of such redox-active systems relies on the possibility to fine tune the charge state of the cavity, be it positive or negative, by a simple control over the applied electrical potential or of the oxidizing/reducing chemical agent. On this ground, it is worth mentioning that beyond potential applications in electrochemical sensing for environmental and medical sciences 4,55 or for redox catalysis, 1i a valuable extension of such control over the cavity charge lies in the possibility to trigger: (i) the cavity size, as in the case of metalla-rectangle 40, 54 (ii) the binding affinity between the redox-active host cavity and a given guest, a key issue for delivery applications. From this point of view, the possibility to trigger the host-guest affinity, thanks to an external physical stimulus, is the subject of intense interest.…”

“…It is worth noting that in addition to being redox-active, such systems intrinsically present a cavity which can therefore be used to bind a complementary guest. 4 This combination of properties is of particular importance for applications such as sensing or controlling encapsulation/delivery processes of various guests. Finally, the supramolecular assembly approach may constitute a promising future strategy to address the design of organic materials (e.g.…”