NEWS & VIEWS M.VAN DER AUWERAER

Supramolecular chemistry has been around forseveral decades,but never has it been so close todelivering materials of technological relevance for organic electronics.The recent European Materials Research Society symposium on Supramolecular Approaches to Organic Electronics and Nanotechnology in Strasbourg,France (24–28 May,2004) featured a number of important advances towards the development of electronic devices.There are two distinct approaches that scientists are pursuing,and both are giving interesting results.One approach is based on exploiting electron transfer through single molecules.The other aims to exploit extensive non-covalent interactions to prepare large (several hundreds of nanometres) domains by supramolecular organization. To make molecules perform the function of a