The understanding of self-assembly of complex multiblock copolymers is in the early stages though various multiblock copolymers have been synthesized accurately with the development of contemporary polymer chemistry. In this background, Weihua Li et al. drew a parallel between the complex spherical domains self-assembled from terpolymers and the crystal structure of ionic compounds and alloys. On this basis, they put forward and validated a design principle on chain structures of multiblock copolymers. A dozen binary mesocrystals including NaCl, CsC, ZnS, AlB2, CaF2 and Al2O3 were achieved based on this principle.

The relevant paper was published in Journal of American Chemistry Society (Xie Nan, Liu Meijiao, Deng Hanlin, Li Weihua*, Qiu Feng and Shi Anchang. Macromolecular Metallurgy of Binary Mesocrystals via Designed Multiblock Terpolymers, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 2974)