Engineered Binding Microenvironments in Halogen Bonding Polymers for Enhanced Anion Sensing

Mimicking Nature's polymeric protein architectures by designing hosts with binding cavities screened from bulk solvent is a promising approach to achieving anion recognition in competitive media. Accomplishing this, however, can be synthetically demanding. Herein we present tractable approach, directly incorporating potent supramolecular anion-receptive motifs into scaffold, tuneable through judicious selection of the co-monomer. A comprehensive analysis and sensing demonstrated redox-active, halogen bonding hosts. Notably, consistently outperform their monomeric analogues, especially large halide enhancements ca. 50-fold observed aqueous-organic mixtures. These are rationalised generation presentation low dielectric constant microenvironments which there appreciable exclusion.