Fun with Lego (molecules)
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A great childhood pleasure is playing with Legos® and marveling at the variety of structures you can create from a small number of basic elements. Such control and variety of superstructures is a goal of polymer chemists, but it is hard to regulate their specific size and how the pieces fit together. Researchers report a simple system to make different nano-architectures with precision.
Depending on the relative amounts of different building-block molecules, it is possible to create different sandwich and wheel topologies (shown above in micrographs and below as models).
American Chemical Society. Copyright 2016
Using a variety of highly efficient chemical transformations and other techniques to ensure high yields and purity, Stephen Z. D. Cheng, Yiwen Li, Wen-Bin Zhang and coworkers designed systems to create giant molecules with 'orthogonal' ends, meaning that they only fit together with a specific partner just like Legos®. Depending on the relative amounts of different building-block molecules, these molecules come together in different superstructures -- ranging from cubes to wheels and sandwiches. Eventually, they could be employed in device-creation, where it is crucial to have precise control over the positions of the components.
Original publication
Wei Zhang, Mingjun Huang, Hao Su, Siyu Zhang, Kan Yue, Xue-Hui Dong, Xiaopeng Li, Hao Liu, Shuo Zhang, Chrys Wesdemiotis, Bernard Lotz, Wen-Bin Zhang, Yiwen Li, and Stephen Z. D. Cheng; "Toward Controlled Hierarchical Heterogeneities in Giant Molecules with Precisely Arranged Nano Building Blocks"; ACS Central Science; 2016
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