Crystalline Supramolecular Polymers: Dynamics, Chirality, and Function

Inspired by biological systems, supramolecular polymers have emerged over the past three decades as an important way to form functional structures with potential to tune the internal order and dynamics and to create materials with the potential for responsiveness, reconfigurability, and recyclability. We focus here on several recent examples of ordered supramolecular polymers with a significant extent of internal order that results in crystalline molecular packing, or with dynamics that allow them to undergo structural reconfiguration. These examples highlight the spectrum of molecular mobility that the noncovalently bound constituents can experience. These materials have found interesting functions in their interaction with chiral biological systems and in their ability to form materials with interesting optoelectronic and photocatalytic behavior.