General Aspects of Template Thermodynamics and Kinetics

From the discussion so far it is clear that the action of a template has a pronounced entropic rather than an enthalpic effect. The reason for this is that the free motion 

the discussion of the entropic contributions so far is valid for the isolated host-guest system. If placed in a solvent, solvent molecules that saturated the attractive contacts of the host and of the guest are liberated upon host-guest complex formation and can account for a significant entropy gain, as in the case of the well known chelate effect in coordination chemistry. 

A general model for template-assisted reactions should finally provide answers to various questions some of which are listed in the following  

Once these questions can be answered within the TAR model, a rational design of template effects may become possible. The mechanism presented may already be useful as a helpful classification scheme to incorporate the tremendous variety of empirically found template-assisted chemical processes. The elementary steps sketched so far can be supplemented by reaction rate constants, which can be combined to a final formal-kinetic scheme to yield the total reaction rate. As a consequence, predictive elements of the TAR model will show up. 

In the past, this endeavor has often rested on detailed investigations of particular supramolecular systems. However, the general thermochemical view provides a 

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