Preparation and Characterization of Nanosized Structures with Applications in Bioscience and Materials

Abstract

The so-called bottom-up approach to the fabrication of nanostructures from stable building blocks has become a popular theme in current science and engineering. This construction principle mimics e.g. biological systems by exploiting the order-inducing factors that are imminent to the system rather than imposing order top-down from an external source. While the fabrication techniques of current commercial importance such as lithography fall practically without exception into the top-down category, bottom-up fabrication may be in the future offer a number of potentially very attractive advantages. These include experimental simplicity down to the atomic size scale, the possibility of three-dimensional assembly, and the potential for inexpensive and environmentally friendly mass assembly.