Chemical‐Fuel‐Driven Assembly in Macromolecular Science: Recent Advances and Challenges

In the past decade, chemical‐fuel‐driven processes have been integrated with synthetic self‐assembled systems, in which both the formation and properties can be carefully controlled. This strategy can drive systems far away from equilibrium, tailor the lifetime window of transient self‐assembled systems, thus holding promise for future smart, adaptive, self‐regulated, and life‐like systems. By judging whether the building blocks or transient self‐assembled systems participate in the fuel‐to‐waste conversion, the reported systems can be divided into two classes: dissipative self‐assembly and self‐assembly under dissipative conditions. Among these systems, the utilization of macromolecular building blocks to design non‐equilibrium self‐assemblied systems is becoming common. Macromolecular systems capable of dissipating energy with a programmed time domain have found widespread application, and have therefore been an active field of scientific inquiry. This Minireview aims to highlight the recent progress and opportunities of chemical‐fuel‐driven assembly in macromolecules. We envision that chemical‐fuel‐driven approach will play an increasingly important role in polymer science in the near future.