Recent Progress of Chiral Hierarchical Assemblies from a Chinese Perspective

Self-assembly of predesigned chiral molecules to form structurally diverse functional materials has been one of the most exciting recent developments in materials science and nanotechnology over the past decade. Particularly, the rationally designed chiral supermolecules and their hierarchical assemblies result in superior microenvironments, in which they interact distinctly with molecularly asymmetric guests for enantiospecific recognition. The chemistry of chiral supermolecule-based materials (CSMs) has become a lively research topic, and thus this review seeks to shed light on a range of synthetic CSMs at differing length scales developed in the past 5 years, with emphasis on the representative work from China. This review includes cavity-containing chiral supermolecules, chiral polymers, and chiral crystalline materials, aiming to tackle important issues from their design, synthesis, and structure to cutting-edge applications. This, in turn, allows for fundamental understanding of the transfer, amplification, and functional expression of chirality from the molecular to the supramolecular to the macroscopic scale. Finally, we provide perspectives on the promises, opportunities, and key challenges for the future development of useful chiral functional materials.