Self-assembly generates more versatile scaffolds for crystal growth. Application of gene therapy technologies to develop self-assembling scaffolds for the production of inorganic materials.

"By investigating the fundamental design rules for the control of self-assembled supramolecular structures, we can now organize large functional molecules into nanoscopic arrays," said Gerard Wong, a professor of materials science and engineering and of physics at the University of Illinois. Wong and his colleagues report their latest experimental results in the September issue of the journal Nature Materials.

"We showed that the self-assembly of charged membranes and oppositely charged polymers into structures can be understood in terms of some simple rules," said Wong, senior author of the paper. "We then applied those rules and demonstrated that we could organize molecules into regular arrays with pore sizes ten times larger than in previous DNA-membrane complexes."