Science Fair Project Encyclopedia Supramolecular chemistry is a
relatively new field of chemistry which focuses quite literally
on going "beyond" molecular chemistry. It can be described as
the study of systems which contain more than one molecule, and
it aims to understand the structure, function, and properties of
these assemblies. Interest in supramolecular chemistry arose
when chemistry had become a relatively mature subject and the
synthesis and properties of molecular compounds had become well
understood. The domain of supramolecular chemistry came of age
when Donald J. Cram, Jean-Marie Lehn, and Charles J. Pedersen
were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1987 in
recognition of their work on "host-guest" assemblies (in which a
host molecule recognises and selectively binds a certain guest).
Other examples of supramolecular systems include biological
membranes, polynuclear metal complexes, liquid crystals, and
molecule-based crystals. Even a cell can be envisaged as a (very
complex!) supram