A communication by Dong-Po Song, Ying Lin, Yue Gai, Nicholas S.  Colella, Cheng Li, Xiao-Hui Liu, Samuel Gido, James J. Watkins* published in the current issue of JACS.

The Watkins group reported a simple strategy for the fabrication of well-ordered functional nanocomposites containing high loadings of metal nanoparticles with core diameters larger than 15 nm. Brush block copolymers were used as templates for the controlled self-assembly of NPs bearing ligands that exhibit strong attractive interactions with one of the domains. This study offers new opportunities for the creation of functional hybrid materials for use in plasmonic, nonlinear optical, energy harvesting, electronic and memory devices.