Triazole formation and the click concept in the synthesis of interlocked molecules

The click concept, as originally discussed by Sharpless, Finn, and Kolb, is both powerful and simple. Kolb et al. suggested that in the search for functional molecules, chemists should focus on a small set of reactions that proceed in high yield under mild conditions and in high selectivity. Their proposal was that a relatively small number of such methodologies is sufficient to explore chemical space to solve problems in a range of disciplines, an idea pithily contained in their suggestion that chemists can obtain “diverse chemical function from a few good reactions.” In this perspective, we discuss how these ideas are particularly relevant in the context of the synthesis and study of mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs), which helps to explain why the best-known click reaction, the Cu-mediated alkyne-azide cycloaddition, was adopted so rapidly by the MIM community, and highlight that more explicit application of click concepts could help drive future progress.