Self-Assembly of Structures with Addressable Complexity.

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.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. DF acknowledges the hospitality of the NYU Center for Soft Matter Research.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Chemical Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5b1191