From soft robotic fingers that can gently grasp and release delicate objects on demand to luminescent water quality monitors that dim to signal the presence of contaminants, numerous smart devices could be derived from a rapidly developing new family of stimuli-responsive molecular materials called porous cages.

“These stimuli-responsive molecular entities enable us to make smart materials that can automatically respond to cues or changes in their environment,” says Niveen Khashab from the Smart Hybrid Materials Lab at KAUST. As a pioneer in stimuli-responsive porous cage research, Khashab was invited to share her expert perspective on this rapidly emerging field.

“Porous cages are discrete, hollow molecular constructs that can accept small molecule ‘guests’ within the cavity at their core,” she explains. Hosting a guest molecule triggers structural and property changes in the porous cage, enabling useful functions such as movement or color change. “Our key contribution to the field has been the design and synthesis of molecular hosts capable of recognizing a wide range of guest molecules, and thus responding to changes at the molecular level.”

Khashab adds that this work has led to smart gels and pastes with applications ranging from smart agriculture to wound healing.

Read more at KAUST Discovery.