Organic Imine Cages: Molecular Marriage and Applications

: Imine condensation that is known to the chemists for more than a century, has recently been extensively used for easy synthetic access to large organic cages of defined shapes and sizes. Surprisingly, in the context of the synthetic methodologies of organic imine cages (OICs), self‐sorting/self‐selection protocol has been overlooked over the years; while, such process omnipresent throughout nature from the creation of galaxies to the formation of smallest building unit of life (cell). Such a process has the incredible ability to guide a system towards the formation of a specific product(s) out of a collection of equally probable multiple possibilities. This review sheds light on the new opportunities in cage design offered by the self‐sorting/molecular‐ marriage protocol in organic imine cages. Herein, we also discuss the recent undergoing efforts to explore organic cages for various exciting new applications like detection of nitroaromatic explosives, as template for nucleation of very tiny metal nanoparticles (MNPs), and as a proton conducting material.

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