Metal ion directed self-assembly of sensors for ions, molecules and biomolecules

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the metal-ion directed construction of discrete molecular assemblies. Once the versatility of this approach for the construction of hitherto inaccessible molecular architectures was demonstrated, work towards fully functional systems rapidly developed. Since these architectures have a wide range of possible applications, this perspective review will focus on one important aspect of this research: the construction of hosts with optical or electrochemical sensing outputs. As this overview will illustrate, research in this area is now producing working examples of sensors for variety of ionic, molecular, and biomolecular guests.