Kinetic and Thermodynamic Self-Sorting in Synthetic Systems

Abstract

Self-sorting represents the spontaneous transformation of a low-order multicomponent system into several high-order subsystems with fewer components. This elementary behavior is involved in many chemical self-organization processes, serves as a model for complex biological systems, and could allow rapid identification of new sensors, solar cell components, and other structured functional architectures, as well as new reactions. Selected recent examples of self-sorting in synthetic systems are reviewed.