Anions are king

Anion receptor chemistry 

Jonathan Sessler, Philip Gale and Won-Seob Cho  

Cambridge, UK: Royal Society of Chemistry 2006 | 414pp | ?119.95 (HB) | ISBN 0854049746 

 Reviewed by Paul Beer

This book certainly achieves its goal of providing a highly readable, concise and up-to-date overview of the exciting, vibrant and rapidly growing field of anion coordination chemistry. As world leading practitioners in the area, the authors’ enthusiasm for the subject matter comes across loud and clear.  

This eighth monograph in the series on supramolecular chemistry is timely because it is nearly a decade since the publication of the last book on the subject and much has happened in the interim. Aimed primarily at final year undergraduates, graduates and established researchers, the book’s introductory chapter serves as an excellent hors d’oeuvre, especially to the newcomer. In particular it highlights the importance of negatively charged species in daily life and in the natural world and introduces the reader to paradigms of synthetic anion receptor chemistry design from a historical viewpoint.  

The scene is thus set for the subsequent self-contained and fully referenced chapters which expound the principles of anion complexation via, in the main, biologically inspired recognition motifs incorporated into receptor frameworks. The chapters include very recent developments in anion-directed assembly and sensing.  

Summary remarks at the end of each of these chapters help to reinforce key points and themes of anion recognition chemistry. The final ’afterword’ chapter gives some indication of where the field may be heading, with predictions of growth areas. Overall this is an excellent, well written and indispensable monograph which can serve as both an introductory and reference text, and will appeal to chemists and biologists alike.