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Home > News > From nano to macro - moldable metals shape things from the bottom up

April 24th, 2007

From nano to macro - moldable metals shape things from the bottom up

Abstract:
The promise of revolutionary bottom-up nanotechnology is based on a vision of molecular assembly technologies where nanoscale materials and structures self-assemble to microscale structures and finally to macroscopic devices and products. We are a long way from realizing this vision but researchers are busily laying the foundation for the things to come. Assembling nanoscopic components into macroscopic materials has been an appealing goal but one of the enormous difficulties lies in bridging approximately six orders of magnitude that separate the nanoscale from the macroscopic world. New research at Northwestern University in the U.S. helps to overcomes this difficulty by dividing the assembly process into two manageable sub-steps. First, nanoparticles are assembled into larger, 100 nm-size, spherical building blocks, which are both deformable and "sticky" towards one another. Once assembled, these components "glue" together like pieces of clay to give millimeter or even centimeter-sized structures. The novelty of this technique is both the hierarchical assembly approach (i.e., atoms to nanoparticles to supraspheres to macroscopic materials) and the resulting "soft" structures, which contrast with previously reported hard and brittle nanoparticles assemblies/crystals. This research takes a further step in making nanoscale discoveries relevant to our everyday - macroscopic - world.

Source:
nanowerk.com

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