Self assembly without dependence on thermal motion
Non-thermal selfassembly (or diffusionless selfassembly) shall here in this wiki refer to self assembly that is not driven by diffusion and thermal motion.
No that is not impossible.
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Macroscopic example with magnets
An macroscopic example of this kind of self-assembly is e.g. a chain of layed out magnets such that they just not snap together.
There one can initiate complete self assembly into a stack with just a tiny controlled nudge one end of the chain.
The entire chain self-assembles into a stack in a chain reaction like dominoes.
Note that there is no need to shake a box of magnets to simutae thermal motion here.
(wiki-TODO: add link to a certain video showing the described process)
Eventual practical application at medium scales and with electrostatics
The same thing might be doable in case of a chain of blocks of pre-assembled foldamers (e.g. produced by a foldamer printer)
but rather than magnetic fields (like in the example case with macroscale magnets)
charges and salt concentrations might be usable to create the required longer range forces.
Practically diffusionless selfassembly would proceed incrementally.
Not laying out everything and then snapping everything together at once.
Right away during the production of the chain of blocks.
Similar to how proteins fold up right away incrementally during coming out of the synthesizing ribosome.
Proteins fold to a large part with thermally driven assembly though.
Where this is needed (eventually)
Diffusion speed for bigger blocks in the convergent selfassembly hierarchy drops quickly.
So any desired self assembly on larger scales must proceed diffusionless.
Higher irreversibly
What snapped together stays snapped together.
There are no thermal jostles that can jank apart erroneous connection to give them another go on a correct assembly.
Assembly has to be correct on the first try or else the product is broken.
Related: Kinetic traps
