Supramolecular Chemical Sensors: Integrating Supramolecular Concepts into Sensing Devices

Dear Colleagues,

Supramolecular chemistry has enabled significant advances in a broad variety of chemistry fields and related applications, based on the fundamental chemical principles of noncovalent interactions between various chemical components. For example, the 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three researchers (Fraser Stoddart, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Ben Feringa) whose work on molecular machines falls squarely in the realm of supramolecular chemistry. Applications of supramolecular chemistry in chemical sensor design, development, and optimization have likewise expanded at a remarkable rate and include the use of supramolecular hosts for indicator displacement assays, the use of cyclodextrin-based systems for enhanced fluorescence and colorimetric detection, and the use of synthetic macrocycles to bind and detect a broad variety of target analytes. Such sensing has operated in solution, in the gas phase, and in a variety of solid-state devices.

This Special Issue will include recent developments and advances in the area of supramolecular chemical sensors, with a particular emphasis on how the noncovalent interactions that underlie supramolecular chemistry can be exploited in the design, development, and optimization of high-performing chemical sensors. From the perspective of chemical sensors, supramolecular chemistry provides a myriad of opportunities to visualize and implement novel chemical sensors that solve continued challenges in chemical detection. From the perspective of supramolecular chemistry, chemical sensor development is a natural outgrowth of many of the principles of noncovalent interactions as well. We hope that this Special Issue provides a broad overview as well as detailed perspectives into the rich intersection of these two high-impact fields.

Assoc. Prof. Mindy Levine
Guest Editor

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• supramolecular chemistry
• macrocycles
• chemical sensors
• noncovalent interactions
• host–guest chemistry
• fluorescence spectroscopy
• signal transduction
• colorimetric sensors
• electrochemical sensors
• cyclodextrin
• curcubiturils
• cavitands
• indicator displacement assays