Drawing inspiration from nature, chemists have employed confi nement as a tool to achieve selectivity in chemical reactions. 1 Confi ning reactants has the power to drive chemical reactions with astonishing precision as seen in the remarkable selectivities exhibited by enzymes in chemical processes, the phenomenon of photosynthesis, and so on. Within a confi ned environment, 2 the familiar electronic and steric effects of solution chemistry are replaced by structural and topological factors that frequently result in products that display a level of selectivity or specifi city that has hitherto been unobtainable in solution. Upon confi nement, inherent reactivity of confi ned guests often becomes of secondary importance compared with features such as symmetry, geometric considerations, and noncovalent interactions that develop within the confi ned environments. This review will highlight the confi nement effect offered by zeolite Y supercages, 3,4 the noncovalent interaction (viz., cation -π and cationcarbonyl interactions) 5,6 that develops upon inclusion of substrates within faujasite zeolite X/Y supercages, and the effect of such interactions in photophysical and photochemical processes). 7,8
ZEOLITE Y SUPERCAGES: NANOCAVITY THAT OFFERS NONCOVALENT INTERACTIONSZeolites 3 are inorganic crystalline aluminosilicate microporous materials (particle size ranges 0.1 -10 μ m, 40 naturally occurring and more than 100 synthetic
389Supramolecular Photochemistry: Controlling Photochemical Processes, First Edition. Edited by V. Ramamurthy and Yoshihisa Inoue.