Stochastic size control of self-assembled filaments
Abstract
Controlling the size and shape of assembled structures is a fundamental challenge in self-assembly, and is highly relevant in material design and biology. Here, we show that specific, but promiscuous, short-range binding interactions make it possible to economically assemble linear filaments of user-defined length. Our approach leads to independent control over the mean and width of the filament size distribution and allows us to smoothly explore design trade-offs between assembly quality (spread in size) and cost (number of particle species). We employ a simple hierarchical assembly protocol to minimize assembly times, and show that multiple stages of hierarchy make it possible to extend our approach to the assembly of higher-dimensional structures. Our work provides a simple and experimentally straightforward solution to size control that is immediately applicable to a broad range of systems, from DNA origami assemblies to supramolecular polymers and beyond.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.04985,
title = {Stochastic size control of self-assembled filaments},
author = {Maximilian C. Hübl and Carl P. Goodrich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.04985},
year = {2025}
}