Precision chemical engineering: integrating nanolithography and nanoassembly

Precise control over functional three-dimensional nanoarchitectures and how to integrate them across different length scales is a significant challenge in nanoscience and nanoengineering. In recent years, hybrid top-down/bottom-up processes, which combines the precision of lithographic techniques and the parallelism of self-assembly-what might be termed precision chemical engineering, have been actively pursued for realising such a major task. Lithographic radiative techniques, including ultraviolet (UV) light, X-rays and electron-beam (e-beam), have been used for creating nanostructured surfaces on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), which offer unprecedented range of surface chemical functionalities. Generation of three-dimensional nanostructures by self-organisation of self-assembled nanoscale components onto nanopatterned SAM surface templates has also been demonstrated. Nevertheless, these methodologies are in their early stages offering ample opportunity for further research and process development. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.