Nanoscale Assembly

Recent advances have pushed the limits of lithography firmly into the sub-100 nm domain, with smallest feature sizes around 10 nm. However, compared to living organisms, devices fabricated using nanolithography are not nearly as complex, as they are essentially 2D and contain only a limited number of chemical elements. For centuries, Nature has been a major inspiration for science. First of all to learn how Life functions at cellular level, but increasingly, as a blueprint for designing non-natural devices where the building blocks and their assembly are inspired by biological examples. The key tool in translating these examples into the domain of engineering, has been self-assembly or self-organization. This book gathers a spectrum researchers who have not only furthered our knowledge of self-assembly using small molecules, polymers and colloidal particles as building blocks, but who have also shown it to be a practical tool in the assembly of an astonishing variety of devices, ranging from molecular electronics to biosensors.