Emergence of anion-π interactions: The land of opportunity in supramolecular chemistry and beyond

The anion-pi interaction, a non-covalent attractive force between hosts (electron-deficient arenes) and guests (anions) besides having many turns and surprises has recently turned into a vital supramolecular interaction. Over the past few years, it has become more and more attractive due to its applicability in diverse areas of research such as molecular recognition, sensing, biomembrane transport, catalysis and also in designing of novel selective anion-receptors. Therefore, the collection of the progress related to this non-covalent interaction is well overdue and extremely desirable to the research community. To this context, we planned to report the detailed developments of this wonderful interaction since its involvement into the supramolecular family. This particular review article in beginning provide the basic fundamentals of these interactions by means of theoretical, computational, and experimental investigations followed by the concept of additivity, directionality, and heptacity. Lastly, we have focused to cover its impact in different fields ranging from metal-organic frameworks, organic electronics, and molecular self-assemblies to the biological sciences. We believe that the present account will surely offer a new dimension to anion-pi interaction and we are pretty sure that the readers will be benefitted from this review article. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.