Organic Macrocycles as Building Blocks for Porous Materials

The development of self-assembled solid-state supramolecular architectures with nanosized pores or cavities is an intensively active research area, aiming at the preparation of new materials with potential applications in nanotechnology such as molecular sieves, sensors, and gas-storage devices. Organic solids could represent a competing alternative to zeolites, clays, metal-organic frameworks, mesoporous metal oxides. They feature not only the required porosity but also high selectivity, which can be achieved both by tailoring channel dimensions to guest molecules, and also by providing specific interactions with organic functional groups. Moreover, dynamic structural transformations based on flexible porous frameworks are always possible leading to functional materials with the fabrication of switches or actuators at a supramolecular level. Two types of macrocycles will be considered, namely calixarenes and cyclopeptoids. Both represent a class of very versatile compounds, which can be easily modified to achieve the desired building blocks.