Diversifying Nanoparticle Superstructures and Functions Enabled by Translative Templating from Supramolecular Polymerization

Abstract Biology exploits a transcription–translation approach to deliver structural information from DNA to the protein‐building machines with high precision. Here, we show how the structural information of small synthetic molecules could be used to guide the assembly of inorganic nanoparticles into diversified yet long‐range ordered superstructures, enabling the information transfer across four or five orders of magnitude in length scale. We designed three perylene diimide (PDI) based isomers differing by their site‐specific substitutions of the methyl group, which were able to supramolecularly polymerize into diverse structures. Importantly, coassembly of these PDI isomers with nanoparticles (NPs) could produce diverse long‐range ordered nanoparticle superstructures, including one‐dimensional NPs chains, double helical NPs assemblies and two‐dimensional NPs superlattices. Equally important, we demonstrate that the information originated from small molecules could diversify the functions of the self‐assembled nanocomposites.