Organometallic half-sandwich complexes of the late transition metals are versatile building blocks for supramolecular chemistry. They can be used to build metallamacrocyclic receptors and coordination cages, to study the adaptive behavior of dynamic combinatorial libraries and to generate indicator displacement assays for the detection of biologically interesting analytes such as peptides and aminoglycosides.

Boronic acids are versatile building blocks for the construction of complex molecular architectures. Using reversible condensation reactions, it is possible to obtain macrocycles, cages, dendritic structures, and rotaxanes, as well as 1-, 2-, and 3-dimensional polymers in one-pot reactions from simple starting materials. This perspective highlights important recent developments in this area.

Nitrous oxide (N₂O, ‘laughing gas’) is a very inert molecule. Still, it can be used as a reagent in synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry, serving as O-atom donor, as N-atom donor, or as a oxidant in metal-catalyzed reactions.