The goal of our research is to understand the microstructure-property relationship in soft materials and to develop new strategies to manipulate and tailor the microstructures. The building blocks include polymers, surfactant molecules, and colloidal particles. The microstructure is formed by spontaneous self-assembly of these building blocks into supramolecules; the resulting systems may be structured thin films, solutions or gels which could potentially find useful in optoelectronic, energy and biomedical applications.