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Nanophysics

A step up to self-assembly

Nature volume 429, pages 617–618 (2004)Cite this article

Powerful computer simulations have resolved the mechanism for the nanoscale assembly of the ‘hut’-like clusters that form after a few layers of atoms have been deposited on certain solid surfaces.

From the beautiful snowflakes that form from a random aggregation of water molecules, to the creation of a living organism, nature has found such efficient means of self-assembly that, in contrast, human techniques often seem crude. Even in our most impressive technologies for fabricating microstructures on surfaces — such as the lithographic techniques used to create integrated circuits — human efforts still seem like chiselling patterns out of stone. At the nanometre scale, the resolution that can be achieved using lithography is reaching its limit, and a new set of tools is needed. By better understanding nature's methods for assembly on solid surfaces, involving diffusion, nucleation and growth, it might be possible to orchestrate these phenomena such that a complete computer chip consisting of several billion transistors could assemble itself, like a complex biological organism. Indeed, for nanotechnology to become affordable, nanostructures will have to build themselves; normal manufacturing methods will be useless. The laws of physics do not preclude this possibility, but our present understanding of surface physics is still too shallow to achieve such complex self-organization and assembly.

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Figure 1: Step-climbing and hut-building.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Kristen Fichthorn

  2. Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4–6, Berlin-Dahlem, 14195, Germany

    Matthias Scheffler

Authors
  1. Kristen Fichthorn
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  2. Matthias Scheffler
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Fichthorn, K., Scheffler, M. A step up to self-assembly. Nature 429, 617–618 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/429617a

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