Organic Imine Cages: Molecular Marriage and Applications

Imine condensation has been known to chemists for more than a century and is used extensively to synthesize large organic cages of defined shapes and sizes. Surprisingly, in the context of the synthetic methods for organic imine cages (OICs), a self-sorting/self-selection (molecular marriage) process has been overlooked over the years. Such processes are omnipresent in nature, from the creation of galaxies to the formation of the smallest building blocks of life (the cell). Such processes have the incredible ability to guide a system toward the formation of a specific product or products out of a collection of equally probable multiple possibilities. This Minireview sheds light on new opportunities in cage design offered by the self-sorting/self-selection protocol in OICs. Recent efforts to explore organic cages for various exciting new applications are discussed; for example, for detection of harmful small organic molecules, as templates for nucleation of metal nanoparticles (MNPs), and as proton-conducting materials.