Pillararene-based supramolecular polymers

Pillararenes, as a new type of macrocyclic hosts, possess columnar structures and electron-rich cavities. Pillararenes not only recognize suitable cations, but also bind many neutral molecules. Due to the easy modification of pillararenes, various functional groups can be conveniently attached to the rim of pillararenes to provide suitable interaction sites, and the modified pillararenes even bind anionic guests. Thus, pillararenes and their derivatives have presented intriguing and unique host-guest recognition nature in the past few years, which make them ideal building blocks for the preparation of supramolecular polymers. Pillararene-based supramolecular polymers (PSPs) not only possess many merits of traditional covalent polymers but also have many specific properties, such as self-reparability, degradability, and self-adaptation. This feature paper gives an overview of the preparation of PSPs and covers recent research advance and future trends of pillararene-based host-guest pairs, assembly methods, topological architectures, stimuli-responsiveness, and functional features. We expect that the review will be helpful to researchers working in the fields of supramolecular chemistry and polymer science.