Nanofabrication with nanoparticles
Lucia Pasquato
Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and INST Trieste Unit, University of Trieste, via L.
Giorgieri 1, Trieste, Italy. e-mail: lpasquato@units.it
An impressive variety of nano building blocks, including nanospheres, nanorods, nanocubes, nanoplates,
nanotetrapods, and nanoprisms, exists and continues to grow with breakthroughs in synthesis techniques.
The application of nanotechnology to areas such as photonics and electronics, chemical and biological
sensors, energy storage, and catalysis requires the manipulation of these nano-objects into functional
materials and devices, and this remains a fundamental challenge. Self-assembly is generally regarded as the
most promising means for designing and controlling the bottom up assembly of nanometer-scale objects
into structures such as sheets, tubes, wires, and shells needed as scaffolds and structures for catalysis,
hydrogen storage, nanoelectronic devices, and drug delivery.1 For example, DNA-functionalized AuNPs
could be assembled into highly-ordered BCC and FCC crystal structures. This work demonstrated the ability
to create two distinct colloidal crystals using the same nanoparticle building blocks while varying only the
DNA linkers.2 Or, plasmonic nanocrystal molecules could be constructed via the polymerization of organic
surface ligands grafted on the nanoparticle surface.3
In this lecture an overview of the strategies to functionalized nano building blocks in a controlled fashion
with a diversity of tethers, that enable specific and nonspecific interactions to direct their assembly will be
presented.
1.
C. L. Choi, A. P. Alivisatos Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem. 2010, 61, 369-389. Hermans, T. M.; Broeren, M. A. C.; Gomopoulos, N.; van
der Schoot, P., van Genderen, M. H. P.; Sommerdijk, N. A. J. M.; Fytas, G.; Meijer, E. W. Nature Nanotech. 2009, 4, 721-726. Z.
Zhang, M. A. Horsch, M. H. Lamm, S. C. Glotzer Nano Lett. 2003, 3, 1341-1346.
2.
D. Nykypanchuk, M. M. Maye, D. van der Lelie, O. Gang Nature 2008, 451, 549-552. S. Y. Park, A. K. R. Lytton-Jean, B. Lee, S.
Weigand, G. C. Schatz, C. A. Mirkin, Nature 2008, 451, 553-556.
3.
De Vries, G. A.; Brunnbauer, M.; Hu, Y.; Jackson, A. M.; Long, B.; Neltner, B. T.; Uzun, O.; Wunsh, B. H.; Stellacci, F. Science
2007, 315, 358-361.