Anion coordination and anion-templated assembly under halogen bonding control

This highlight discusses a selected set of halogen-bonded architectures reported in the literature wherein anions function as halogen bonding acceptors. Some of these architectures have been assembled purposefully, others have been obtained serendipitously. This paper is perhaps the first attempt to prove the effectiveness of halogen bonding in anion coordination and anion-templated assembly. A corollary of this attempt is that anions are particularly robust tectons in halogen bonding driven self-assembly processes. The focus here is particularly on halide anions and their ability to afford a wide variety of supramolecular architectures in a rational and predictable way. A brief inventory of other anions and their behaviour in self-assembly processes based on halogen bonding is also given.