Donor-acceptor charge transfer assemblies based on naphthalene diimides(NDIs)

Charge transfer architectures have attracted wide attention due to their advantages of easy probing and higher solvent tolerance, making it possible to construct charge transfer assemblies in a wide range of organic and aqueous media. 1, 4, 5, 8-Naphthalenediimides (NDIs) have been widely used as electron-deficient acceptors to construct charge transfer complexes with a variety of electron-rich donors. In this review, we introduced various supramolecular charge transfer assemblies based on NDIs that have undergone vigorous development in the past decade, including catenanes, rotaxanes, supramolecular polymers and gels. Due to the intrinsic weak nature of aromatic charge transfer interactions, highly organized structures were proved to be a result of multiple cooperative non-covalent interactions in most cases. In this review, we aim to shed light on the future design of NDI-based supramolecular structures and their applications in the real world. Graphic abstract We in this review chose three types of NDI based charge transfer structures that have attracted considerably attentions throughout the last 10 years and systematically discussed their design strategies, structures and their characteristic features. [GRAPHICS] .