One hundred years of helicene chemistry. Part 3: applications and properties of carbohelicenes

Abstract

Carbohelicenes are a class of fascinating chiral helical molecules which have a rich history in chemistry. Over a period of almost 100 years, chemists have developed many methods to prepare them in a racemic or in a non-racemic form. They also possess a series of interesting chiral, physical, electronic and optical properties. However, their utilization in chemistry or chemistry-related fields has rarely appeared in a detailed and comprehensive review. It is the purpose of this review to collect fundamental applications and functions involving carbohelicenes in various disciplines such as in materials science, in nanoscience, in biological chemistry and in supramolecular chemistry. From the numerous synthetic methodologies reported up to now, carbohelicenes and their derivatives can be tailor-made for a better involvement in several subfields. Among those domains are: nanosciences, chemosensing, liquid crystals, molecular switches, polymers, foldamers, supramolecular materials, molecular recognition, conductive and opto-electronic materials, nonlinear optics, chirality studies and asymmetric synthesis. Helicene chemistry is now at a developmental stage, where sufficient application data are now collected and are extremely useful. They provide many more ideas for setting up the basis for future innovative applications.