Chapter 11. Cucurbituril-functionalized Supramolecular Assemblies: Gateways to Diverse Applications

Abstract

Construction of smart materials based on supramolecular interactions has received considerable research interest owing to their potential applications in energy storage, photonic devices, drug delivery vehicles, sensors as well as therapeutics. In this context, research literature has seen tremendous contributions on the supramolecular assemblies of small guest molecules with various macrocyclic receptors because they provide a unique way to control tailor-made nanoarchitectures in creating predesigned functional materials for targeted applications. This chapter covers some of the recent works, including ours, on the spectacular molecular properties of cucurbituril-based supramolecular functional assemblies of a few organic dyes and polyoxometalates having technological and biological importance, especially in the domain of aqueous dye laser, light-emitting devices, photofunctional devices, energy storage devices, molecular architectures, supramolecular catalysts, radiotracer separation, antibacterial agents and drug delivery vehicles.