Building supermicelles from simple polymers

Precise control of the polymer building blocks enables synthesis of a range of micrometer-scale structures [Also see Report by Qiu et al. ] Toy blocks such as Lego allow complex structures to be built from the simple blocks. Similarly, synthetic chemists are attempting to make large and complex molecules from simple reagents ( 1 ). On page 1329 of this issue, Qiu et al. ( 2 ) report an elegant strategy for making well-defined micrometer-scale superstructures by using a series of polymerization techniques and selective self-assembly processes.