Abstract: The diversity of thermal decomposition behavior of host in a host-guest supermolecule was described in detail. The concept of a survived host was given. A survived host means the product of a host-guest supermolecule losing its guest after heated. It served as a powerful evidence for the weak intermolecular interaction between host and guest in inclusion phenomenon. Focused on survived cyclodextrin (survived CD), the present work carefully compared the differences of thermal decomposition behavior among free CD, complexed CD, and survived CD, an dpointed out an important conceptual error which had occurred in some papers due to a lack of appreciation of the relationship between survived CD and complexed CD.

Key words: Cyclodextrin, Supermolecule, Inclusion complex, Kinetics, Thermal decomposition