Over the past forty years,good-old fashioned colloid chemistry has undergone something of a revolution,transforming itself from little more than a collection of qualitative observations of the macroscopic behavior of some complex systems into a discipline with a solid theoretical foundation and a whole to- boxofnew chemical techniques. It can now boast a set of concepts which go a long way towards providing an understanding of the many strange and interesting behavior patterns exhibited by natural and artificial systems on the mesoscale. This second volume of"e;Topics in Current Chemistry"e;on Colloid Chemistry, focuses on supramolecular approaches and new approaches towards polymer colloids,also with strong emphasis on biological and biomedical applications. Again topics were chosen which are expected to have broader relevance and to be interesting to a more general readership. The volume opens with a contribution by C.M.Paleos in which new amp- philes are presented which not only self-assemble to micelles or vesicles but also possess the ability to show specific recognition of complementary H-bridge p- terns.Such structures might point a way to a rational addressing of surfaces and supramolecular structures by purely chemical means.

Over the past forty years,good-old fashioned colloid chemistry has undergone something of a revolution,transforming itself from little more than a collection of qualitative observations of the macroscopic behavior of some complex systems into a discipline with a solid theoretical foundation and a whole to- boxofnew chemical techniques. It can now boast a set of concepts which go a long way towards providing an understanding of the many strange and interesting behavior patterns exhibited by natural and artificial systems on the mesoscale. This second volume of"e;Topics in Current Chemistry"e;on Colloid Chemistry, focuses on supramolecular approaches and new approaches towards polymer colloids,also with strong emphasis on biological and biomedical applications. Again topics were chosen which are expected to have broader relevance and to be interesting to a more general readership. The volume opens with a contribution by C.M.Paleos in which new amp- philes are presented which not only self-assemble to micelles or vesicles but also possess the ability to show specific recognition of complementary H-bridge p- terns.Such structures might point a way to a rational addressing of surfaces and supramolecular structures by purely chemical means.