Introducing the concept of programmability paves the way for designing complex and intelligent materials, where the materials’ structural information is pre-encoded in the components that build the system. With highly tunable interactions, DNA-coated particles are promising building elements to program materials at the colloidal scale, but several grand challenges had prevented them from assembling into the desired structures and phases. In recently years, the field has seen many significant progresses in tackling these challenges, which have led to the realization of numerous colloidal structures and dynamics previously inaccessible, including the desirable colloidal diamond structure, that are useful for photonic and various other applications. We review these exciting progresses, focusing in detail on how DNA-coated colloids can be designed to have sophisticatedly tailored surface, shape, patches as well as controlled kinetics, which are key factors that allow one to program in principle a limitless number of structures. We also share our view on how the field may be directed in future.

中文翻译：

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用DNA涂覆的胶体对自组装材料进行编程

引入可编程性的概念为设计复杂和智能的材料铺平了道路，其中材料的结构信息已预先编码在构建系统的组件中。具有高度可调的相互作用，涂有DNA的颗粒有望成为在胶体规模上对材料进行编程的建筑元素，但是一些重大挑战阻止了它们组装成所需的结构和相。近年来，该领域已经看到了应对这些挑战的许多重大进展，这导致实现了许多以前无法获得的胶体结构和动力学，包括所需的胶体金刚石结构，可用于光子和各种其他应用。我们回顾了这些令人振奋的进展，详细介绍如何将DNA包覆的胶体设计为具有精心定制的表面，形状，斑块以及受控的动力学，这是使人们原则上可以编程无数种结构的关键因素。我们也就未来该领域的发展方向发表了看法。