Introduction

Chambers 21st Century Dictionary defines ‘material’ as ‘any substance out of which something is, or may be, made’ [1]. For the purpose of this chapter a somewhat different statement will be used: any organic substance that may have potential applications will be termed an organic material. Superimposed on this definition we would like to have another constraint: such materials should be supramolecularly synthesizable (i.e. noncovalently assembled from molecular components).

‘Chemistry beyond the molecule’ [2], or supramolecular chemistry as we know it, has evolved over the past three decades, and has now become a hot area of research in chemistry. One of the characteristics of supramolecular chemistry is that the traditional barriers of organic, inorganic, physical and analytical chemistry do not exist here – it is a unique multidisciplinary area in which all areas of chemistry (and some other disciplines) are blended nicely.

Supramolecular chemistry originally developed with the design of receptors for metal ions and small organic molecules (the discovery of crown ethers and synthesis of cryptands, cyclophanes, molecular tweezers, etc.), but has now grown beyond molecular recognition and catalysis. From studies on simple molecular recognition we have learnt how complex molecular species can be designed and built – systems which will not only be useful for understanding molecular interactions, but will also function in a predictable manner. The concept of self-assembly [3, 4] is increasingly being used towards achieving this.