Supramolecular Chemistry: Applications and Prospects

Supramolecular chemistry is an interdisciplinary field of research, reaching across from chemistry to the physics and biology of chemical species more complex than the molecules themselves. These molecular structures are held together and organised by non-covalent intermolecular interaction forces. Supramolecular chemistry is rooted in the chemistry of organic synthesis for the construction of molecules, and in the field of coordination chemistry for the assembly of multimolecular entities. But it also extends to physical chemistry in the theoretical and experimental investigation of the interactions that come into play, and biochemistry via the biological processes of recognition and binding of a substrate which originally inspired its development, and finally the science of materials where one investigates the novel physicochemical properties of these new chemical species.