SELF-ASSEMBLING CAVITIES - PRESENT AND FUTURE

The construction of artificial receptors to encapsulate any but the sm allest substrates becomes prohibitively difficult by a covalent approa ch as the size of substrates increases, and the cavities thus produced are often poorly accessible. As an alternative, noncovalent interacti ons can be used for the self-assembly of smaller, simpler fragments in to the desired cavities. One such method, namely the design of hydroge n-bonded host species to accommodate guests of different shapes and si zes, and current approaches to chiral recognition are discussed here.