Supramolecular chemistry is originated from synthetic organic chemistry and host-guest chemistry and its development greatly relies on the advance of host-guest chemistry. Synthetic macrocyclic compounds as an important part of host-guest chemistry and supramolecular chemistry have been designed and synthesized to further construct organic functional materials. In the past few decades, scientists have investigated a variety of supramolecular host compounds, including crown ethers, cyclodexrins, calixarenes, cucurbiturils, and pillarenes (or pillar [n]arenes, n=5~15). In particular, pillarenes, which can be easily synthesized and functionalized, have gained great attention for their typically rigid pillar-shape architecture and unique physical and chemical properties. Meanwhile, pillarenes have made great additions to the development of organic functional materials and enriched the contents of supramolecular chemistry and nanoscience. To the best of our knowledge, these pillarene-based organic functional materials have been successfully applied to many different scientific fields including molecular recognition and self-assembly, bacteria and virus inhibition, detection of pesticide and heavy metal ions, stabilization of nanoparticles, optical sensing, catalysis, biological sensing, drug delivery and controlled release, and so on. In this review, we mainly focus on summarizing the research progress of pillarene-based organic functional materials and comment on the bright future of their potential applications.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Organic functional materials based on pillarenes
2.1 Bacteria/Virus inhibition
2.2 Optical functional materials
2.3 Supramolecular polymeric materials
2.4 Drug delivery systems
2.5 Materials for detection of pesticide and heavy metal ions
2.6 Others
3 Conclusion and outlook