Self-assembly articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • Article |

    DNA origami allows the design of rod-shaped particles with specific geometrical features. This is exploited to examine how particle-level characteristics affect properties of the bulk phase and the superstructures such colloids assemble into.

    • Mahsa Siavashpouri
    • , Christian H. Wachauf
    •  & Zvonimir Dogic

  • News & Views |

    Self-propelled Janus particles with externally regulated anisotropic interactions can be made to swarm, cluster and form slithering chains.

    • Roberto Di Leonardo

  • Letter |

    Metal–dielectric Janus colloids subjected to perpendicular a.c. electric fields can self-organize into swarms, chains, clusters and isotropic gases, depending on the frequency of the field.

    • Jing Yan
    • , Ming Han
    •  & Steve Granick

  • News & Views |

    Geometric frustration governs shape selection in fibrous materials.

    • Eran Sharon
    •  & Hillel Aharoni

  • News & Views |

    Macroscopic deformation can induce chirality in initially achiral nanoparticle composites, and reversibly modulate their chiroptical properties.

    • Daeyeon Lee
    •  & Sang Eon Han

  • Article |

    Designed DNA-based polyhedral frames, whose vertices are connected to nanoparticles, facilitate their self-assembly into predetermined crystalline and open three-dimensional lattices.

    • Ye Tian
    • , Yugang Zhang
    •  & Oleg Gang

  • Article |

    Elementary geometric constructions and constrained optimization algorithms can be used to fit origami tessellations to any curved surface.

    • Levi H. Dudte
    • , Etienne Vouga
    •  & L. Mahadevan

  • Letter |

    Aggregations of fire ants are viscoelastic with identical elastic and viscous moduli, and exhibit shear-thinning behaviour when deformed beyond the linear regime.

    • Michael Tennenbaum
    • , Zhongyang Liu
    •  & Alberto Fernandez-Nieves

  • Article |

    Experiments show that the progressive softening of microtubules under mechanical stress results from the enlargement of pre-existing structural defects, and that the incorporation of tubulin dimers can restore the microtubule’s initial stiffness.

    • Laura Schaedel
    • , Karin John
    •  & Manuel Théry

  • Editorial |

    The versatility of DNA linkers as selective binders is accelerating the rational design of the assembly of nanoparticle crystals with unprecedented structural complexity.

  • News & Views |

    The structure of crystals made of DNA-bridged nanoparticles can be selectively switched between various lattices by reprogramming the DNA-mediated interactions between the nanoparticles.

    • Erika Eiser

  • News & Views |

    Improved control over the shape of nanoparticles and the interactions between them allows the rational construction of intricate microscale assemblies.

    • Jean-Philippe Sobczak
    •  & Hendrik Dietz

  • Commentary |

    Advances in the control of the shape, bonding direction and valency of DNA-coated nanoparticles allow the synthesis of nanoparticle crystallites of ever increasing complexity.

    • Bert Nickel
    •  & Tim Liedl

  • Editorial |

    Model colloidal systems are a testbed for understanding aspects of the organization of matter.

  • News & Views |

    Temperature can switch the thermodynamic phase of colloid–polymer mixtures by tipping the balance between competing attractive interactions induced by polymer depletion or adsorption.

    • Ah-Young Jee
    • , Boyce Tsang
    •  & Steve Granick

  • News & Views |

    Computer simulations of one-component three-dimensional icosahedral quasicrystals will help to understand the mechanisms that may stabilize them in experiments.

    • Marc de Boissieu

  • News & Views |

    Circularly polarized light actualizes the formation of chiral twisted ribbons from achiral semiconductor nanoparticles.

    • Bart Kahr
    •  & Alexander G. Shtukenberg

  • News & Views |

    Janus ellipsoids self-assemble into self-limiting fibres that can be reversibly actuated by applying an electric field.

    • Eric M. Furst

  • News & Views |

    The nucleation of a crystal within another can involve intermediate liquid nuclei.

    • Eduardo Sanz
    •  & Chantal Valeriani

  • Commentary |

    Understanding entropic contributions to common ordering transitions is essential for the design of self-assembling systems with addressable complexity.

    • Daan Frenkel

  • Commentary |

    Two conceptual strategies for encoding information into self-assembling building blocks highlight opportunities and challenges in the realization of programmable colloidal nanostructures.

    • Ludovico Cademartiri
    •  & Kyle J. M. Bishop

  • Article |

    Experiments and computer simulations show that Janus ellipsoids can self-assemble into self-limiting fibres that have shape-memory properties and can be actuated by applying an external electric field.

    • Aayush A. Shah
    • , Benjamin Schultz
    •  & Michael J. Solomon

  • Article |

    Peptide-based nanofibres with bioactive proteins attached can now be made such that the protein ligands are introduced in a controlled manner. This tailoring of the nanofibre’s composition enables the ratio of multiple different proteins to be highly tuned within the assemblies. By changing the protein content of the nanofibres, it is possible to adjust the antibody responses in mice to the different nanofibres.

    • Gregory A. Hudalla
    • , Tao Sun
    •  & Joel H. Collier

  • Article |

    Biofilms are multifunctional and environmentally responsive assemblies of living and non-living components. By using synthetic gene networks in engineered cells to regulate the production of extracellular amyloid fibrils, and by interfacing the fibrils with inorganic materials such as metal nanoparticles, stimuli-responsive synthetic biofilms with switchable functions and tunable composition and structure have now been produced.

    • Allen Y. Chen
    • , Zhengtao Deng
    •  & Timothy K. Lu

  • News & Views |

    The spontaneous organization of semiconductor nanoparticles into uniform pairs of parallel nanorods bridged at their ends illustrates the potential of hierarchical self-assembly processes for the formation of inorganic superstructures with complexity comparable to that of small self-organized biological aggregates.

    • Bongjun Yeom
    •  & Nicholas A. Kotov

  • News & Views |

    DNA-capped nanoparticles crystallize into uniform microcrystals of Wulff polyhedra when cooled slowly through the melting temperature of the DNA linkers.

    • Shogo Hamada
    • , Shawn J. Tan
    •  & Dan Luo

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