Revisiting the Water Binding of Small Cavitands: The Role of Benzene Hydrogen Bonding

water, is hard to study in molecular recognition field due to its high polarity and small size. The strong hydrogen bonding interaction of water with themselves or other polar molecules makes it very hard to isolate and observe a single molecule in solution. Small cavitands have been designed to accommodate small molecules such as alcohols. 1 Recently, we have reported the synthesis and water-specific binding property of