Self-assembly articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • News & Views |

    A general approach for decorating nanoparticles with a highly dense shell of DNA linkers expands the range of building blocks that can be used for DNA-mediated nanoparticle self-assembly.

    • Ulrich Simon

  • Letter |

    Surface-active macromolecules that are chemically different can be mixed at fluid interfaces if the molecules attract each other, or if they have complementary shapes and a net attraction is induced by a depletant. Now, a strategy that eludes the need for complementarity between the molecules, where tethered molecular brushes induce an entropic net repulsion between like species, achieves long-range arrays of perfectly mixed macromolecules.

    • Sergei S. Sheiko
    • , Jing Zhou
    •  & Michael Rubinstein

  • Letter |

    A highly selective and efficient approach to covalently bond complementary DNA strands in solution and on surfaces on demand is shown. The approach involves the substitution of a pair of complementary bases by cinnamate-based crosslinks, which can be activated on exposure to ultraviolet light, and allows chemical patterning of flat and curved surfaces down to micrometre and potentially submicrometre resolutions.

    • Lang Feng
    • , Joy Romulus
    •  & Paul Chaikin

  • News & Views |

    Open crystalline configurations self-assembled from colloids with sticky patches have recently been shown to be unexpectedly stable. A theory that accounts for the entropy of the colloids' thermal fluctuations now explains why.

    • Michael E. Cates

  • News & Views |

    The assembly of hundreds of thousands of semiconductor nanorods into nearly spherical or needle-like colloidal superparticles made of highly ordered supercrystalline domains can be explained by simple thermodynamic and kinetic principles.

    • Uri Banin
    •  & Amit Sitt

  • News & Views |

    The release and self-assembly of peptides from metal–organic frameworks creates surface tension differences that can fuel the cruising motion of the framework, and a microscale 'boat' wrapped around a framework particle, at the air/liquid interface.

    • Laurent Courbin
    •  & Franck Artzner

  • Article |

    Nanoplasmonic structures that can detect trace analytes via surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy typically require sophisticated nanofabrication techniques. Self-assembly of gold nanoparticles into close-packed arrays at liquid/liquid and liquid/air interfaces is now used for the detection of multi-analytes from aqueous, organic or air phases.

    • Michael P. Cecchini
    • , Vladimir A. Turek
    •  & Joshua B. Edel

  • Article |

    Various artificial cells that can store molecules in cages are designed to generate mechanical motion by dissipating energy through chemical reactions or through the reorganization of molecules. A hybrid biomimetic motor system consisting of a metal–organic framework and diphenylanaline peptides is now designed to release guest molecules in the isotropic direction via a bond-breaking framework.

    • Yasuhiro Ikezoe
    • , Gosuke Washino
    •  & Hiroshi Matsui

  • News & Views |

    The self-assembly of surfactant micelles in the formation of templated mesoporous silicas can be tuned to produce mesoporous materials with quasicrystalline ordering, proving that quasicrystals are indeed a general form of ordered but non-periodic matter.

    • Sarah H. Tolbert

  • News & Views |

    Colloidal particles interacting through DNA linkers can be designed to form solids that melt when either heated or cooled. This scenario widens the temperature window in which colloidal superlattices form by reducing kinetic bottlenecks.

    • Oleg Gang

  • Letter |

    siRNA delivery has so far been hampered by carriers that inefficiently encapsulate RNA, and by its degradation prior to cellular uptake. Now, self-assembled crystalline microsponges consisting solely of cleavable RNA strands — which are converted to siRNA only after cellular uptake — achieve, with three orders of magnitude lower concentration, the same degree of gene silencing as conventional siRNA nanocarriers.

    • Jong Bum Lee
    • , Jinkee Hong
    •  & Paula T. Hammond

  • Article |

    In the quest for more efficient thermoelectrics, a common strategy has been to introduce nanostructures in bulk crystals, thus reducing the thermal conductivity without affecting the electrical transport properties. A route is now presented in which the aggregation of nanoplatelets creates nanostructured materials that have higher thermoelectric efficiencies than their bulk counterparts.

    • Rutvik J. Mehta
    • , Yanliang Zhang
    •  & Ganpati Ramanath

  • Letter |

    Highly monodisperse silver polyhedral nanocrystals passivated with polymers are shown to behave as quasi-hard particles that self-assemble by sedimentation into millimetre-sized supercrystals, which correspond to the particles' three-dimensional densest packings. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the observed self-assembled structures, including an exotic structure for octahedra that is stabilized by depletion forces induced by an excess of polymer in solution.

    • Joel Henzie
    • , Michael Grünwald
    •  & Peidong Yang

  • Letter |

    A suspension of magnetic colloidal particles confined at a liquid–liquid interface and energized by an external periodic magnetic field self-assembles into star-shaped structures that can be magnetically manipulated to capture and transport smaller non-magnetic particles.

    • Alexey Snezhko
    •  & Igor S. Aranson

  • News & Views |

    Maximum yield of self-assembly for a target structure can be attained with simple rules for the interactions between the structure's building blocks.

    • Daan Frenkel
    •  & David J. Wales

  • Article |

    Nanofibrous hollow microspheres, formed by the self-assembly of star-shaped biodegradable polymers, are shown to be effective injectable cell carriers for cartilage repair. The microspheres accommodate cells and enhance cartilage regeneration in vivo with respect to various control groups, in particular, indicating smooth integration between the regenerated and host tissue.

    • Xiaohua Liu
    • , Xiaobing Jin
    •  & Peter X. Ma

  • News & Views |

    The realization of a self-assembled kagome lattice from colloids with attractive hydrophobic patches offers a simple but powerful example of the bottom-up design strategy.

    • Flavio Romano
    •  & Francesco Sciortino

  • Letter |

    Cathode degradation and methods for improving the selectivity of anode catalysts remain crucial challenges for the design of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. A chemically modified Pt electrode with a self-assembled monolayer of calix[4]arene molecules is now shown to selectively block the undesired oxygen reduction reaction.

    • Bostjan Genorio
    • , Dusan Strmcnik
    •  & Nenad M. Marković

  • News & Views |

    The DNA-mediated assembly of anisotropic gold nanoparticles shows the importance of particle shape in the controlled formation of DNA–nanoparticle superlattices.

    • Sharon C. Glotzer
    •  & Joshua A. Anderson

  • Letter |

    The formation of a NaTl lattice structure by DNA-mediated assembly of gold nanoparticles and virus-like protein nanoparticles is reported. The inorganic and organic components each form diamond-like frameworks that interpenetrate to give the NaTl lattice. These diamond-like structures are of interest for potential applications as photonic materials.

    • Petr Cigler
    • , Abigail K. R. Lytton-Jean
    •  & Sung Yong Park

  • Article |

    The selective reaction of one part of a bifunctional molecule is a fundamental challenge in heterogeneous catalysis. Modifying a supported palladium catalyst with alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers is now shown to increase selectivity for the hydrogenation of 1-epoxy-3-butane to 1-epoxybutane.

    • Stephen T. Marshall
    • , Marykate O’Brien
    •  & J. William Medlin

  • Article |

    Synthetic solid-state nanopores are of interest at present for their use as single-molecule sensors for characterization and detection of biomolecules. By using self-assembly evaporation and atomic-layer deposition, kinked silica nanopores are shown to exhibit reduction in DNA-translocation velocity and selectivity.

    • Zhu Chen
    • , Yingbing Jiang
    •  & C. Jeffrey Brinker

  • Article |

    Peptide-based molecules that self-assemble into lamellar plaques with fibrous texture on heating, subsequently break on cooling to form long-range aligned bundles of nanofibres. This thermal route to monodomain gels is compatible for living cells and allows the formation of noodle-like viscoelastic strings of any length.

    • Shuming Zhang
    • , Megan A. Greenfield
    •  & Samuel I. Stupp

  • Article |

    Peptoids are synthetic polymers designed to mimic the structure and functionality of proteins. When a one-to-one blend of two oppositely charged peptoids is mixed in solution, giant, 2.7-nm-thick free-floating sheets are formed. The sheets can specifically bind a corresponding protein, and offer potential for producing functional two-dimensional nanostructures in the future.

    • Ki Tae Nam
    • , Sarah A. Shelby
    •  & Ronald N. Zuckermann

  • Article |

    Silicon-based lithium-ion batteries are attractive because in principle they offer higher specific capacities than conventional graphite. A hierarchical bottom-up approach is now used to prepare lithium-ion anodes with improved reversible capacities and stable electrochemical performance.

    • A. Magasinski
    • , P. Dixon
    •  & G. Yushin

Browse broader subjects

Browse Self-assembly across other nature.com journals