Supramolecular chemistry articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Article |

    Efficient conduction of protons on a micrometre scale is critical for the development of fuel cell membranes — a key component of clean energy sources. Now, self-assembling amphiphilic polymers have been shown to provide a nanoscale organization of proton-conducting functionalities that dramatically increases anhydrous proton conductivity.

    • Yangbin Chen
    • , Michael Thorn
    •  & S. Thayumanavan

  • News & Views |

    Macrocyclic compounds can serve as hosts for smaller organic molecules, but precise control over the uptake and release of the guests remains challenging. Now, a host–guest system has been built that responds to the addition of metal ions, showing promise for drug-delivery applications.

    • Werner M. Nau

  • Article |

    Viruses are ideal templates for engineering multifunctional materials. They can exhibit multiple copies of surface ligands and encapsulate inorganic and organic materials. Here, viruses are assembled into well-defined micrometre-sized objects by the addition of dendritic linkers. The linkers are designed to decompose on irradiation, which results in the release of the original virus particles.

    • Mauri A. Kostiainen
    • , Oksana Kasyutich
    •  & Roeland J. M. Nolte

  • Article |

    Macrocyles capable of hosting other molecules inside their hollow interiors have been used extensively to make threaded complexes and interlocked molecules. Now, a relatively large and flexible tetracationic macrocycle has been shown to bind anionic guests to form pseudorotaxanes that form extended structures in solution and the solid state.

    • Han-Yuan Gong
    • , Brett M. Rambo
    •  & Jonathan L. Sessler

  • Article |

    Nanotubular structures made from different materials are being investigated for applications ranging from sensing to drug delivery, but controlling how they interact with ‘cargo’ molecules has proved challenging. Now, the selective uptake, precise positioning and triggered release of gold nanoparticles has been achieved with nanotubes assembled from triangular DNA building blocks.

    • Pik Kwan Lo
    • , Pierre Karam
    •  & Hanadi F. Sleiman

  • News & Views |

    Supramolecular gels, which rely on non-covalent interactions, are typically fragile. Now, hydrogels that possess remarkable mechanical strength combined with the ability to rapidly self-heal have been built through multiple non-covalent interactions.

    • David K. Smith

  • Research Highlights |

    The reversible conversion between guanine-based extended ribbons and macrocyclic G-quartets has been directly observed at a liquid–solid interface by scanning tunnelling microscopy.

    • Anne Pichon

  • Research Highlights |

    Exposing supramolecular filaments to X-rays results in spontaneous and reversible crystalline ordering.

    • Neil Withers

  • News & Views |

    A linear molecule containing three bipyridine ligands can be wrapped around a single metal-ion template to form an open-knot complex. The loose ends of the knot can be 'tied' together through esterification or olefin-metathesis reactions to form closed knots that do not unravel when the metal template is removed.

    • Edward E. Fenlon

  • Article |

    The synthesis of interlocked compounds such as catenanes and rotaxanes has undergone much development in recent years, but molecular knots are still relatively hard to make. It has now been shown that a linear bipyridine oligomer can fold around a single zinc-ion template to form a complex that can be cyclized to give a molecular trefoil knot.

    • Jun Guo
    • , Paul C. Mayers
    •  & Christopher A. Hunter

  • Review Article |

    The formation of single-layer-thick molecular networks at metal surfaces is governed by the interplay between intermolecular and interfacial interactions. This Review highlights how, with films built by vacuum deposition, these interactions can be modulated to form substrates that may be useful as catalysts or templates for further deposition steps.

    • Ludwig Bartels

  • Article |

    The incorporation of non-natural base pairs into double-stranded DNA, especially those mediated by metal–ligand interactions, offers new opportunities for synthetic DNA materials. The structural implications of such modifications will help guide developments in this area, and a solution structure of a B-type DNA duplex containing consecutive metal-mediated base pairs has now been elucidated.

    • Silke Johannsen
    • , Nicole Megger
    •  & Jens Müller

  • Research Highlights |

    The isolation of an intermediate species during the self-assembly of a giant molybdenum oxide wheel suggests that a smaller cluster templates the wheel's formation before being evicted.

    • Anne Pichon

  • Article |

    The bulk properties of materials that lack long-range order have been widely studied, but their local structures remain difficult to elucidate. Now, using scanning tunnelling microscopy, researchers have been able to look more closely at the structural motifs of robust, two-dimensional glassy networks assembled through metal–ligand interactions.

    • Matthias Marschall
    • , Joachim Reichert
    •  & Johannes V. Barth

  • News & Views |

    Although it may seem counter-intuitive, the attraction between positively charged radical ions offers a new approach to driving controlled motion in molecular machines.

    • Harry L. Anderson

  • News & Views |

    Synthetic procedures for making nanoparticles often result in samples that contain a range of different particle sizes. By using hollow self-assembled metal–organic spheres as templates, however, it is possible to make silica nanoparticles with uniform shapes and sizes in a precisely controlled fashion.

    • Boris Breiner
    •  & Jonathan R. Nitschke

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