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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Entropic size control of self-assembled filaments

Maximilian C. Hübl* and Carl P. Goodrich†

  • *Contact author: maximilian.huebl@ist.ac.at
  • †Contact author: carl.goodrich@ist.ac.at
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L012054 – Published 5 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/68rs-3qgn

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 conceptually simple solution to size control that is applicable to a broad range of systems, from DNA nanoparticles to supramolecular polymers and beyond.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L012054– Published 5 March, 2026
  • Received 7 July 2025
  • Accepted 6 January 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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