The Growing Field of Photoswitchable Macrocycles: A Promising Way to Tune Various Properties with Light

Abstract Thanks to supramolecular interactions of macrocyclic compounds with their guest ions or molecules, macrocycles have found wide applications in molecular and chiral recognition, separation, transportation, molecular machines, and so on. Photoswitchable macrocycles are especially appealing and attracting more and more interest because the embedded molecular photoswitch enables dynamic control of molecular shape, conformation, and different properties by light, a non‐invasive, remote and highly tunable stimulus. With available photochromic compounds, various photoswitchable macrocycles have been developed. In this review paper, we describe the recently reported photoswitchable macrocyclic compounds, with a focus on the control of the macrocyclic structure, dynamic, photo or thermal isomerization, as well as their applications on encapsulation and release of ionic or aromatic species, on the reversible modulation of chemical, biological, electronic, fluorescent and chiroptical properties by light.