Molecular self-assembled chemosensors and their arrays

Abstract Supramolecular chemosensor arrays are powerful analytical methods to classify and quantify analytes using pattern recognition. This Review summarizes approaches based on molecular self-assemblies to realize chemosensor arrays comprising a small number of supramolecular chemosensors. After discussing the conventional design strategy for chemosensor arrays, an overview of simple minimized but multifunctional chemosensor arrays for multi-analyte detection is provided. In this context, self-assembled chemosensor arrays utilizing inter- or intramolecular interactions have been highly useful for obtaining information-rich patterns from a smaller number of chemosensors in environmental and biochemical applications. Finally, self-assembly for pattern recognition “without” a chemosensor array is shown to be the simplest example for chirality sensing. The knowledge related to self-assembled chemosensor arrays gathered in this Review will be useful for developing “sophisticated chemosensor arrays” for real-world scenarios.