TY - JOUR
T1 - Self-Assembly of Structures with Addressable Complexity
AU - Jacobs, William M.
AU - Frenkel, Daan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was carried out with support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Programme Grant EP/I001352/1. We would like to acknowledge discussions with Aleks Reinhardt, Rebecca Schulman, Thomas Ouldridge, Oleg Gang, and Alexei Tkachenko. D.F. acknowledges the hospitality of the NYU Center for Soft Matter Research.
PY - 2016/3/2
Y1 - 2016/3/2
N2 - The self-assembly of structures with "addressable complexity", where every component is distinct and is programmed to occupy a specific location within a target structure, is a promising route to engineering materials with precisely defined morphologies. Because systems with many components are inherently complicated, one might assume that the chances of successful self-assembly are extraordinarily small. Yet recent advances suggest otherwise: addressable structures with hundreds of distinct building blocks have been designed and assembled with nanometer precision. Despite this remarkable success, it is often challenging to optimize a self-assembly reaction to ensure that the intended structure is kinetically accessible. In this Perspective, we focus on the prediction of kinetic pathways for self-assembly and implications for the design of robust experimental protocols. The development of general principles to predict these pathways will enable the engineering of complex materials using a much wider range of building blocks than is currently possible.
AB - The self-assembly of structures with "addressable complexity", where every component is distinct and is programmed to occupy a specific location within a target structure, is a promising route to engineering materials with precisely defined morphologies. Because systems with many components are inherently complicated, one might assume that the chances of successful self-assembly are extraordinarily small. Yet recent advances suggest otherwise: addressable structures with hundreds of distinct building blocks have been designed and assembled with nanometer precision. Despite this remarkable success, it is often challenging to optimize a self-assembly reaction to ensure that the intended structure is kinetically accessible. In this Perspective, we focus on the prediction of kinetic pathways for self-assembly and implications for the design of robust experimental protocols. The development of general principles to predict these pathways will enable the engineering of complex materials using a much wider range of building blocks than is currently possible.
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U2 - 10.1021/jacs.5b11918
DO - 10.1021/jacs.5b11918
M3 - Review article
C2 - 26862684
AN - SCOPUS:84959552656
VL - 138
SP - 2457
EP - 2467
JO - Journal of the American Chemical Society
JF - Journal of the American Chemical Society
SN - 0002-7863
IS - 8
ER -