Cavity-containing materials based upon resorcin[4]arenes by discovery and design

Strategies for the design of multimolecular hosts that display recognition properties analogous to those of monomolecular predecessors are described, In particular, the bowl-shaped cavity of a molecular receptor known as resorcin[4]arene has been elaborated, using hydrogen bonds, for the construction of open and closed cavities that accommodate single and multiple guest species. Both chemical and geometric considerations derived from these studies have led us to identify host frameworks, based upon the five Platonic and 13 Archimedean solids, which have yet to be synthesized or discovered and we propose such systems as targets in chemical synthesis, (C) 2000 Academic Press.