Calixarenes and Nanoparticles

The anchoring of functional organic coatings on the surface of inorganic nanoparticles has been and still is the topic of intense research activity for the development of novel nanomaterials. Within this context metal nanoparticles decorated with synthetic receptors have been quite extensively employed to further expand the scope of supramolecular chemistry. In this chapter we offer a general survey on the use of calixarene derivatives as functional components for the preparation of gold and silver nanoparticles. A particular emphasis is placed on the exploitation of the chemical and structural information stored in properly functionalized calixarene macrocycles as control element during the synthesis to define the nanoparticles nuclearity and the recognition capability of the macrocycle for the manufacturing of nanodevices with potential applications in sensing and biomedicine.