Chapter 2. Catalytic Strategies Within the Confined Spaces of Coordination Cages

Coordination cages have emerged as an interesting and diverse subset of supramolecular systems that utilise the assembly of ligands and metals to create constructs with hollow interiors. This inner space provides opportunities for many applications; however, exploiting it for catalysis is arguably the most interesting and challenging of academic pursuits. In this chapter, we will outline how coordination cage catalysis emerged and followed on from earlier examples of supramolecular methods and highlight the remarkable progress that has been made in the past two decades. This chapter is not intended as a comprehensive review; rather it has been limited to select examples that serve to represent both what has been achieved and what is the current state of the art.