The Lost Work in Dissipative Self-Assembly

A general thermodynamic analysis is given of dissipative self-assembly (DSA). Subsequently, the analysis is used to quantify the lost work in a recently published chemical realization of DSA (Boekhoven et al., Angew Chem Int Ed 49:4825, 2010) where a formation reaction produces the monomers that subsequently self-assemble and are finally annihilated by means of a destruction reaction. For this example, the work lost in self-assembly itself is found to be negligibly small compared to the work lost in the reactions driving the non-spontaneous formation reaction and the kinetically hindered destruction reaction.