Hydrogen bond-assisted supramolecular assembly is the process of assembling small organic molecules to form large supramolecular structures by non-covalent hydrogen bonding interactions. The directionality, reversibility, and strong bonding nature of hydrogen bond make it an attractive and useful approach in supramolecular assembly. Functional groups such as carboxylic acids, ureas, amines, and amides are commonly used to assemble higher order structures upon hydrogen bonding.
Hydrogen bond play an essential role in the assembly of secondary and tertiary structures of large biomolecules. DNA double helix is formed by hydrogen bonding between nucleobases: adenine and thymine forms two hydrogen bonds, while guanine and cytosine forms three hydrogen bonds (Figure "Hydrogen bonds in (a) DNA duplex formation"). Another prominent example of hydrogen bond-assisted assembly in nature is the formation of protein secondary structures. Both the α-helix and β-sheet are formed through hydrogen bonding between the amide hydrogen and the amide carbonyl oxygen (Figure "Hydrogen bonds in (b) protein β-sheet structure").
In supramolecular chemistry, hydrogen bonds have been broadly applied to crystal engineering, molecular recognition, and catalysis. Hydrogen bonds are among the mostly used synthons in bottom-up approach to engineering molecular interactions in crystals. Representative hydrogen bond patterns for supramolecular assembly is shown in Figure "Representative hydrogen bond patterns in supramolecular assembly".  A 1: 1 mixture of cyanuric acid and melamine forms crystal with a highly dense hydrogen-bonding network. This supramolecular aggregates has been used as templates to engineering other crystal structures.