Supramolecular self assembly using synthons and secondary building units

Supramolecular self assembly using synthons and secondary building units 

The term synthon originates from Nobel Laureate E.J. Corey, [55] and appears in the indexed part of the literature for the first time in 1968 [56] and since 1985 some 300-400 articles a year use the term in different circumstances. The concept was extended to crystal engineering and supramolecular chemistry by G. R. Desiraju in the mid 1990 s [14]. In this context, a pair of a suitable hydrogen bond donor and an acceptor is a synthon, but it can of course also be a 

The synthon is thus a suitable interaction that will connect the building blocks, but may not help to determine the geometry of the node. I his is the role of the secondary building unit, SBU, a term inherited from the zeolite area. It includes the node(s) as well as the synthons. 

This also applies to supramoiecular, a word sometimes just used for big molecules . Especially since the meaning chemistry beyond the covalent bond or chemistry of the intcrmolccular bond formally fails to include assemblies based on coordination chemistry, see section 3.2.2. This and other factors make the use of supramoiecular somewhat imprecise, [62] although it is hard to deny the usefulness of the concept [63]. Usage seems to have stabilised around 1500 articles a year at the beginning of this century. 

We find it unnecessary to use any of these terms in this book although most of our examples fall into the supramoiecular self-assembly category. 

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