A Framework for Analyzing and Creating Self-assembling Systems

Self-assembly is an emergent property of decentralized systems, which is seen throughout nature. Understanding and applying this emergent property continues to be an important subject in the natural sciences, as well as engineering and computer science. However, only the specific principles and mechanisms of self-assembly are considered within the scope of their respective disciplines. A framework is presented here, which abstracts self-assembly to components, environment, energy, assembly protocol, spatial relationship, localized communication, and rule set. By viewing self-assembly in this manner, this framework facilitates melding the various self-assembly principles and mechanisms studied across disciplines. The benefit of this is that it aids in the pursuit of designing synthetic systems mirroring the robustness of this bottom-up construction process in nature. Several experiments are presented that exhibit this robust construction process, and demonstrate how this framework can be leveraged for analyzing and creating self-assembling systems.