VIDEO - New 3-D nanostructures assemble themselves

Building a box seems easy, but it is very challenging when the box is only supposed to be a nanometer wide. At that size, 3D structures are too small to be assembled by any machine and they must be guided to assemble on their own. And now, interdisciplinary research from Johns Hopkins University and Brown University has led to a breakthrough showing that higher order polyhedra can indeed fold up and assemble themselves, creating nanostructures that may be used in drug delivery and other applications.