Building nanometer-scale

Soft Lithography Soft lithography represents a non-photolithographic strategy based on self-assembly and replica molding for carrying out micro and nanofabrication [4]. It has been mostly developed in recent years. It is a favorable process for researchers to build nanometer-scale structures. It includes the following techniques ... 

The development of hydrodynamic techniques which allow the direct measurement of interfacial fluxes and interfacial concentrations is likely to be a key trend of future work in this area. Suitable detectors for local interfacial or near-interfacial measurements include spectroscopic probes, such as total internal reflection fluorometry [88-90], surface second-harmonic generation [91], probe beam deflection [92], and spatially resolved UV-visible absorption spectroscopy [93]. Additionally, building on the ideas in MEMED, submicrometer or nanometer scale electrodes may prove to be relatively noninvasive probes of interfacial concentrations in other hydrodynamic systems. The construction and application of electrodes of this size is now becoming more widespread and general [94-96]. 

Research in supramolecular chemistry has shown that molecules are convenient nanometer-scale building blocks that can be used, in a bottom-up approach, to construct ultraminiaturized devices and machines. Chemists are in an ideal position to develop such a molecular approach to functional nanostructures because they are able to design, synthesize, investigate, and organize molecules-that is, make them react or bring them together into larger assemblies. 

C60. These nanometer-scale structures became the focus of enormous interest since they represent potential building blocks for nanostructured materials, composites, and novel electronic devices of greatly reduced size. 

Bourne S. A., Lu J., Mondal A., Moulton B. and M. Zaworotko J., Self-assembly of nanometer-scale secondary building units into an undulating two-dimensional network with two types of hydrophobic cavity, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 40 (2001) pp. 2111-2113. 

The core concept of this fast growing new field is the ability to manipulate/assemble nanometer-scale building blocks into integrated systems. Self-organizing phenomena and nanoscale events share the same working length scale of 1 nm-1 pm and are driven by the same major forces of formation, primarily weak inter-molecular forces. This provides the foundation of the so-called bottom-up construction of nanoscale... 

We are currently in the midst of a new revolution in tribology, driven by (a) the advent of experimental techniques that allow controlled friction measurements at atomic scales and (b) computers that allow the complex dynamics in atomic scale contacts to be analyzed. This new line of study, dubbed nanotribology, is playing a central role in the quest to build robust machines with nanometer-scale moving parts and is poised in turn to beneht from the resulting advances in nanotechnology. 

The aim of this work is testing of SERS-activity of metal-containing microporous alumosilicates or zeolites. Porous structure of zeolite skeletons caused by coupling of tetrahedral [Si04] and [AIO4] building units is a unique basis for stabilization of a super-lattice of mono-dispersed metal clusters. Zeolite matrices combine the factors of nanoporosity and nanometer-scale chemical reactivity with respect to incorporated foreign ions, clusters, and nanoparticles [1]. 

Several physical approaches to writing patterns by STM and AFM have been reported. For AFM, these include moving nanoparticles around and arranging them in patterns by AFM tips, scratching a surface (or, more commonly, in monolayer films of atoms or molecules that coat the surface). For STM, by increasing the currents flowing from the tip of the STM, the microscope becomes a very small source for an electron beam, which can be used to write nanometer-scale patterns by probe-induced chemical vapor deposition,lithography in resists, " and surface modification. The STM tip can also push individual atoms around on a surface to build patterns. ... 

---