Cyclic aromatic imides as a potential class of molecules for supramolecular interactions

Abstract

Cyclic aromatic imide based compounds can be a choice to meet the growing interests in soft materials as nano-dimensional materials. They serve as templates to build upon or act as host components to contribute to the knowledge of crystal engineering. Such compounds serve as the simplest building blocks of dipolar planar motifs and significantly contribute to the assemblies through the stacking effects of dipolar rings. The carbonyl groups of the imides provide extra stability to self-assemblies by participating in a weak interaction scheme. Interactions of the carbonyl groups also provide directional effects to the supramolecular assemblies. Due to the concern of imide based compounds in the biological, environmental, and non-conventional energy and material sectors, these units generate great impetus to use them as supramolecular systems and use of a crystal engineering approach provides the answers to many important issues at the molecular level. In this article, various aspects of aromatic imides focusing around their interactions with different substrates that could attract the interest of crystal engineering and supramolecular chemists are presented by taking representative examples.