Self-assembly of amphiphilic calixarenes and resorcinarenes in water

The calixarenes and resorcinarenes are macrocyclic phenolic molecules that can be modified "a facon'' and a wide range of chemical modification strategies have been published over the last 30 years. Because of their remarkable structural properties and their relative ease of chemical modification, they represent excellent and highly versatile bases to design complex building blocks capable of self-assembly and molecular recognition. They have been widely studied for their ability to form supramolecular structures targeting a wide range of applications. The possibility to regio(rim)-selectively modify these macrocycles with different polar and apolar moieties provides synthetic chemists with an unlimited range of possibilities for the design of complex amphiphiles with a high control over the position of the grafted moieties in the three dimensions. These amphiphiles have been shown to possess outstanding self-assembling and/or molecular recognition properties. This short review describes the developments of the chemistry of amphiphilic calixarenes and resorcinarenes with a clear focus on the synthetic paths used for their production and their self-assembly properties in water.