Macroscopic Supramolecular Assembly and Its Applications

Macroscopic supramolecular assembly (MSA) has been a recent progress in supramolecular chemistry. MSA mainly focuses on studies of the building blocks with a size beyond ten micrometers and the non-covalent interactions between these interactive building blocks to form ordered structures. MSA is essential to realize the concept of “self-assembly at all scales” by bridging most supramolecular researches at molecular level and at macroscopic scale. This review summaries the development of MSA, the basic design principle and related strategies to achieve MSA and potential applications. Correspondingly, we try to elucidate the correlations and differences between “macroscopic assembly” and MSA based on intermolecular interactions; the design principle and the underlying assembly mechanism of MSA are proposed to understand the reported MSA behaviors; to demonstrate further applications of MSA, we introduce some methods to improve the ordered degree of the assembled structures from the point of precise assembly and thus envision some possible fields for the use of MSA.