Supramolecular chirality of self-assembled systems in solution

Abstract

Self-assembly plays an important role in the formation of many (chiral) biological structures, such as DNA, α-helices or β-sheets of proteins. This process, which is the main tool of Supramolecular Chemistry (i.e. the chemistry of the molecular assemblies and of the intermolecular bonds), starts to play a significant role in nanotechnology for the construction of functional synthetic structures of nanometer size. The control of chirality in synthetic self-assembled systems is very important for applications of these systems e.g. in molecular recognition or mimicking of the catalytic activity of enzymes. This tutorial review deals with the most representative contributions in the field of supramolecular chirality. Specifically, the discussion centers on several examples that represent the control over chirality for self-assembled systems in solution.