Helical Colloidal Sphere Structures through Thermo-Reversible Co-Assembly with Molecular Microtubes

Abstract

Self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature, science, and technology and provides a general route to achieve order from disorder at various length scales.[1] Extensive effort has been exerted to molecular and colloidal self-assembly, where molecules and colloids, respectively, organize into larger-scale ordered structures. Although these two research areas have developed separately to a great extent, their combination would be very promising. Nature, for instance, utilizes hierarchical selfassembly across different length scales to construct complex, dynamic functional entities such as cells. Here we bridge the nano- and microscale by the hierarchical co-assembly between molecules and colloids, where molecular self-assembly induces the self-assembly of colloids into ordered structures.