Bottom-up strategy of materials fabrication: a new trend in nanotechnology of soft materials

Recent progresses in nanometer-scale molecular self-organization and mesoscopic pattern formation are reviewed from the view point of nanotechnology of bottom-up materials fabrication. Nanometer-scale layer-by-layer self-assemblies on nanoparticles will provide wide applications in many fields. The micro-contact printing technique is effectively used for up-sizing the nanostructured molecular assemblies as submicrometer- and micrometer-scale patterns. Dissipative structures formed in non-equilibrium systems as self-organized spatio-temporal structures are newly employed for the mesoscopic patterning of the nanostructured molecular assemblies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.