The ability to create nano- and meso-scopic structures with precise geometry is of immense interest and value in nanotechnology. Self-assembly with building blocks that encode the details of the structure is highly promising, but difficult to realize because of kinetic traps and unwanted byproducts. Although possible, it often requires painstaking trial-and-error...

One of the fundamental goals of nanotechnology is to take advantage of the selective and directional interactions between molecules to design self-assembling structures with desired properties. The nanofabrication strategy by self-assembly has a main drawback that interactions between building blocks have to be designed to assemble target structure...