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Nature Nanotechnology 3, 324–325 (1 June 2008) | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.144

Surface patterning: SAMs are better by design

Neil R. Champness

How can we turn the many chemical and biological approaches to nanodevices from elegant solution-phase curios into real-world applications? A surface can provide the interface that is needed to interact with and detect these molecules, and also read the information they contain, so the development of techniques to control the adsorption of molecules on surfaces is an important goal in this field of research. Until now, however, this approach has been restricted in part by the difficulty of controlling pattern formation at the subnanometre scale on the surface.