Structurally tailored and engineered macromolecular (STEM) gels are an addition to the field of advanced polymeric materials and additive/subtractive molecular manufacturing. Taking inspiration from nature, STEM gels were designed based on stem cells, which involved a two-step synthetic procedure. In the first step, the STEM gels are synthesized to be ‘undifferentiated’ templates containing latent active sites. In the second step, STEM gels can be modified to introduce properties that were distinct from the original material. The primary focus has been on postsynthesis polymeric modifications by grafting from the active sites. For this reason, controlled radical polymerization techniques have been employed to more precisely tailor and tune STEM gels. Moreover, spatiotemporal control has been achieved using photo-induced polymerizations.

结构定制和工程化的大分子（STEM）凝胶是高级聚合材料和加法/减法分子制造领域的又一选择。从自然界中汲取灵感，STEM凝胶是基于干细胞设计的，涉及两步合成过程。第一步，将STEM凝胶合成为包含潜在活性位点的“未分化”模板。第二步，可以对STEM凝胶进行改性，以引入不同于原始材料的特性。主要焦点是通过从活性位点接枝到合成后的聚合物修饰。因此，已采用受控自由基聚合技术来更精确地定制和调整STEM凝胶。而且，使用光诱导的聚合已经实现了时空控制。