Structural and Functional Supramolecular Systems

Dear Colleagues,

The success of supramolecular chemistry relies on the ability to tune the non-covalent interactions in well-defined building blocks. In living organisms, supramolecular interactions play a central role by controlling the assemblies of biological subunits into structurally and functionally diverse entities with ultimate precision. Over the past few decades, the knowledge gained from understanding such systems have allowed the strategic design of diverse hierarchical superstructures using structurally and functionally well-defined small organic, inorganic and hybrid molecular building blocks. Simultaneously, there has been a considerable amount of progress in achieving supramolecular assembly of larger building blocks, such as well-defined dendrimers, block-copolymers, designer peptides, and proteins. Among biological particles, small DNA molecules, DNA origamis, genetically modified virus coat proteins and hybrid systems have been explored for new generation functional materials. In the next level, functional metal nanoparticles have been increasingly studied by tuning their size, interactions and colloidal stability to achieve one-, two-, and three-dimensional materials and devices. Apart from designing novel concepts and building blocks, new types of interactions such as halogen bonding interactions have been successfully explored in recent years to obtain functional supramolecular systems.

This Special Issue is focused on emerging concepts for the strategic design of structural and functional supramolecular systems, characterization and their application in materials science, biomedicine as well as in addressing other societal challenges, such as water purification, carbon dioxide capture and energy storage. We expect contributions from researchers working on a wide variety of supramolecular systems in chemistry, material science, biology, physics and computational science. The topics include, but are not limited to.

• Emerging molecular self-assembly (static, dynamic/out of equilibrium) concepts for supramolecular systems, molecular motors, characterization and applications;
• Novel concepts for multistimuli responsive, adaptive, shape memory and self-healing materials;
• Concepts for supramolecular systems and applications using metallosupramolecular chemistry;
• Emerging concepts for functional 2D materials and their applications;
• Novel concepts for supramolecular systems derived from block-copolymer building blocks, dendrimers, and Janus particles;
• Supramolecular interactions in colloidal self-assembly of metal nanoparticles, carbon nanoparticles, and hybrid systems;
• Advanced functional systems using nucleic acids (e.g., DNA, DNA origami, RNA) and hybrid building blocks;
• Self-assembly of biological particles, virus coat proteins, hybrid materials, and applications;
• Supramolecular systems for biomedical applications;
• Emerging concepts for carbon dioxide capture, water purification, and energy storage using supramolecular systems;
• Novel imaging techniques to study supramolecular systems;
• Supramolecular systems for molecular recognition, multicomponent cocrystals, and drug discovery.

Adj. Prof. Dr. Nonappa. 
Guest Editor

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