Special Issue "Study on Self-Assembly of Polymer and Inorganic Nanomaterials"

Dear Colleagues,

Self-assembly describes a process to develop ordered structures from disordered building blocks. It is a crucial and powerful method to make all kinds of functional materials or hierarchical structures both in nature and synthetic conditions, which relies on the elaborate choice of assembly building blocks and the fine control of interactions between them. Among different building blocks, polymers and inorganic nanoparticles gain extensive attention due to their diverse chemical structures and excellent chemical or physical properties. Especially, polymers (including DNA or other biopolymers, etc.) can guide the assembly of inorganic nanoparticles into desirable ordered-structures, which exhibit unique collective and emerging properties that differ from individual nanoparticles. Therefore, self-assembly of polymers and inorganic nanoparticles is an essential technology to develop advanced materials with applications in a variety of different fields.

Despite the rapid development of self-assembly technology, there are still many challenges remaining, such as but not limited to: i, how to generate responsive assemblies that can dynamically change their structures or properties to meet the requirement of complicated applications, such as drug delivery, sensors, bioimaging, micro/nanomotors, and many others; ii: how to generate orchestrated nanostructures through self-assembly, such as Janus or heteronanoparticles, polyelemental nanoparticles, etc; iii, how to improve the uniformity of assembly structures through developing new assembly method, such as technologies based on microfluidics, external field (e.g. magnetic, electric, light, gravity or shear); iv, new method to accurately manipulate the interactions between inorganic nanoparticles should be developed to make hierarchical-assembled structures or functional materials; v, new efficient and repeatable self-assembly method to fabricate macroscopic structures should be developed; vi, the potential applications of various self-assembly technologies in biomedical, healthcare or environmental monitoring devices, energy, information storage, environmental and other fields need further development. Hence, in this special issue, we would like to further explore the various strategies to assemble polymer and inorganic nanoparticles to meet the rising demands for functional materials and advanced applications.

Prof. Dr. Yijing Liu
Dr. Chenglin Yi
Dr. Lei Wang
Guest Editors

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• self-assembly
• polymer nanocomposite
• inorganic nanoparticle
• biomedical or biosensing applications
• energy or information-storage-related applications