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Symmetry breaking in colloidal crystals is achieved with DNA-grafted programmable atom equivalents and complementary electron equivalents, whose interactions are tuned to create anisotropic crystalline precursors with well-defined coordination geometries that assemble into distinct low-symmetry crystals.

Preparing crystals held together with macromolecular bonds can create shape memory materials that can be engineered to exhibit a wide range of reversible changes useful for chemical sensing, optics and robotics.

The rational design and assembly of colloidal quasicrystals is achieved by exploring the hybridization of nanoscale decahedra nanoparticles functionalized with DNA linkers.

DNA-functionalized, anisotropic nanostructures, such as triangular nanoprisms and nanorods, are shown to assemble by means of DNA hybridization into colloidal crystal structures. The crystallization parameters of these nanostructures, and hence the dimensionality and symmetry of the resultant superlattice, are strongly influenced by particle shape.

This paper demonstrates that the DNA molecules attached to gold nanoparticles and the DNA molecules used to link them can be selected to ensure that the nanoparticles assemble into either face centred cubic or body-centred cubic crystals. Synthetically programmable colloid crystallization has finally arrived!

DNA-mediated assembly of hollow nanoparticles can be used in an edge-bonding approach to design and synthesize nanoscale open-channel superlattices, with control of symmetry, geometry and topology.

The process of protein crystallization is poorly understood and difficult to program through the primary sequence. Here the authors develop a computational approach to designing three-dimensional protein crystals with prespecified lattice architectures with high accuracy.

The cleavage of C–C bonds in hydrocarbons is traditionally entrusted to precious metal catalysts, whereas common non-reducible oxides are considered unreactive. Now, the authors report nanostructured silica-embedded zirconia nanoparticles that are competent for the hydrogenolysis of polyethylene with remarkable performance.

Coulombic interactions can be used to assemble charged nanoparticles into higher-order structures, but this process typically requires similarly sized oppositely charged partners. Now, small anions or cations with as few as three charges have been shown to induce attractive interactions between oppositely charged nanoparticles in water, guiding the assembly of colloidal crystals.

Inorganic nanoparticles with non-uniform size distributions can spontaneously assemble into uniformly sized supraparticles with core-shell morphologies.

The structural properties of the DNA-mediated assembly of co-crystals of anisotropic nanoparticles can be controlled through the shape and size complementarity of the DNA-coated nanoparticles.

The detailed nucleation and growth kinetics and the crystal structure of catalytically relevant CoPt₃/Au, FePt/Au and Pt/Au metal dumbbell nanoparticles have been obtained by in situ synchrotron small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering techniques.

Nucleation in highly confined gaps shows distinctly different behavior from nucleation in extrafibrillar spaces. Here, using in situ X-ray scattering and classical nucleation theory, the authors show how confined geometry reduces energy barriers to intrafibrillar mineralization of collagen.

A class of colloids is reported in which inorganic solute particles—such as metals and semiconductors—are dispersed in molten inorganic salts.