Controlled Movement of Cucurbiturils in Host-Guest Systems

Controllable host-guest assemblies play a key role in developing supramolecular materials. This review highlights recent research progress for a type of host-guest systems based on cucurbiturils (CBs) and their derivatives, in which their structural states and related properties can be tuned in response to relative movements of CBs driven by a variety of external stimuli. By taking advantage of unique stimuli-responsive features, these CB-based host-guest systems have been grafted into applicable materials, such as biosystems, nanoarchitectures, and functional nanoparticles. In addition to discussing the preparation methodology and structural characterizations of several CB-based host-guest materials, their charming functionalities, accompanied by variation in the in situ controlled manner and resulting property changes were highlighted. Future studies on the applications of CB-based, smart, tunable materials are also predicted.