Supramolecular science: A new way to understand the matter world

Abstract

After over 20 years' rapid development, supramolecular chemistry has exceeded the original realm of organic host-guest chemistry, and formed its own unique concepts and systems, such as molecular recognition, molecular self-assembly, supramolecular devices and materials[I,2]. These branches have organized into a charming new subject in the whole family of chemistry. Meanwhile, the concept of supramolecule makes people re-observe many traditional but still challenging branch subjects, such as coordination chemistry, liquid crystal, clathrate chemistry, extending all of them into new research space. One important character of supramolecular chemistry is that it lies at the interface among chemistry, biology and physics, which is embodied that all these subjects are contributing to discovering the impetus and controllabe rules of molecular self-assembly from different aspects. With intercrossing and combination with other subjects, supramolecular chemistry has extended into supramolecular science, which is considered as an important headstream of new concepts and high-tech in the 21 st century[3]. In any scientific realms, innovation is always linked to tradition. Retrospecting the history, the earliest postulation that molecular function originates from supramolecular interaction can date back to 1894. At that time E. Fischer proposed the "lock and key" model based on the idea of "selective interaction of molecules", and this idea is believed to be the preliminary basis of the modern supramolecular science. In the 1930s, one of the top periods of colloid chemistry, K. L. Wolf et al. coined the word "supramolecule" to describe the ordered system through molecular association. It is till 1978, in fact, that Prof. J. M. Lehn proposed the concept of "supramolecular chemistry" comprehensively based on the traditional research of the host-guest system in organic chemistry. As he pointed out: "Just as there is a field of molecular chemistry based on covalent bond, there is a field of supramolecular chemistry, the chemistry of molecular assemblies and of the intermolecular bond[1]. Undoubtfully, this is a great turning point of thought.