The Role of Dethreading Process in Pseudorotaxanes and Rotaxanes towards Advanced Applications: Recent Examples

Abstract

©2023 The Authors. European Journal of Organic Chemistry published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This document is the Published Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in European Journal of Organic Chemistry. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.202201512Rotaxanes are a type of mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs), constituted by at least a thread surrounded by a wheel, which are widely employed in the research field of artificial molecular machines. Although applications retaining the integrity of the mechanical bond are usually reported, the dethreading of the components can be crucial to develop some advanced applications. Thus, different dethreading strategies have been reported, and advanced applications which require such a process have turned out to be suitable approaches towards machine-like operation. This review article covers recent examples of applications of pseudorotaxanes and rotaxanes in which dethreading processes have a key role to accomplish the desired function