Five-membered heterocycles as promising platforms for molecular logic gate construction

The field of molecular logic gates began thirty years ago with the early pioneers de Silva et al. (A. P. de Silva, H. Q. N. Gunaratne and C. P. McCoy, Nature, 1993, 364, 42) laying the foundation for modern molecular-scale switches and devices. Recent reports of lab-on-a-molecule and molecular calculators (Moleculators) demonstrate the potential of this bottom-up approach. Five-membered heterocycles were central to the first reported logic gates in 1994 and remain valuable scaffolds in the present day. This review provides an overview of logic gate design using Boolean logic, introduces the work of the first pioneers, and highlights recently reported five-membered heterocycle logic gates.