MRSEC at the University of Chicago - Self-Assembling Metal Polymer Nanostructures

MRSEC at the University of Chicago - Self-Assembling Metal Polymer Nanostructures

Self-assembly is emerging as a powerful, bottom-up method for fabricating materials on the nanometer scale. Such methods are important in the development of next-generation technologies. Self-assembly becomes particularly powerful when the ease and control offered by the assembly of organic materials is combined with the special electronic, magnetic or optical properties provided by inorganic components. The method described here uses a special polymer for the organic material and a variety of metals for the inorganic component. At the Chicago Materials Center, Heinrich Jaeger and graduate student Ward Lopes have developed a versatile approach that involves a hierarchy of multiple levels of self-assembly.