Mesoscopic rings

Insofar as beauty is derived from that which surrounds us, the mechanical bond cannot be ignored. It is applied and admired in society, art, and nature alike, and its beauty is held as both an ancient and modem sentiment. The development of modem tools and machinery, many of which we consider beautiful today (think of a sporty car or a delicate Rube Goldberg or Heath Robinson machine) could not have been accomplished without the mechanical bond. Likewise, interlocked rings can be found in thousands of works of art dating through antiquity. Perhaps most surprising to the casual reader will be the predominance of mesoscopic mechanical interlockings in Nature, even within the cells of our own bodies. 

ID assemblies of nanopaiticles refer to the controlled assembly of nanoparticles into wires, rods, belts, rings, and tubes, which have become the focus of intensive research owing to their unique application in mesoscopic physics and fabrication of nanoscale devices. The basic method for ID assemblies can be divided into template-directed method and template-free method which will be introduced in the following text. 

Levy, L.P., Dolan, G., Dunsmuir, J., and Bouchiat, H. (1990) Magnetization of mesoscopic copper rings - evidence for persistent currents. Physical Review Letters, 64,2074. 

McLellan, J.M., Geissler, M. and Xia, Y. (2004) Edge spreading lithography and its application to the febrication of mesoscopic gold and silver rings. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 126,10830 1. 

Preparation of mesoscopic gold rings using particle imprinted templates, F. Yan and W. A. Goedel, Nano Lett, 2004,4,1193. 

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