Organophosphorus Supramolecular Chemistry Part 1. Receptors for Organophosphorus Compounds

Although still a relatively young field of research, supramolecular chemistry ranks amongst the most important disciplines of organic chemistry with massive number of papers published annually. Despite of their importance in biology and industry organophosphorus compounds appear quite rarely as an object of supramolecular chemistry studies. In this respect compounds able to form supramolecules with certain guest organophosphates and phosphonates have been studied to some extent whereas application of phosphorus containing host molecules is still in its infancy. In this review a state-of-the-art research showing current progress in design and application of host molecules able to recognize and bind specifically phosphate, phosphonate or phosphinate fragments is described. These molecules are usually designed as chemical models of chosen enzymes or for various analytical purporses (as components of sensors, extractants, chiral discriminators, membrane carriers ect.).