Self-Assembly of Polymers

Nowadays polymer self-assembly has become extremely attractive for both biological (drug delivery tissue engineering scaffolds) and non-biological (packaging semiconductors) applications. In nature a number of key biological processes are driven by polymer self-assembly for instance protein folding. Impressive morphologies can be assembled from polymers thanks to a diverse range of interactions involved e.g. electrostatics hydrophobic hots-guest interactions etc. Both 2D and 3D tailor-made assemblies can be designed through modern powerful techniques and approaches such as the layer-by-layer and the Langmuir-Blodgett deposition hard and soft templating. This Special Issue highlights contributions (research papers short communications review articles) that focus on recent developments in polymer self-assembly for both fundamental understanding the assembly phenomenon and real applications.