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.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Chemical Society.
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
SN - 0002-7863
VL - 138
SP - 2457
EP - 2467
JO - Journal of the American Chemical Society
JF - Journal of the American Chemical Society
IS - 8
ER -