Self-assembly, nanopatterning and soft lithography

Project overview The self-assembly and nanopatterning team at the Zurich laboratory is exploring new methods to integrate molecules, nanoparticles and micro-objects on surfaces. Besides using well-established micro- and nanofabrication methods, much of our work focuses on developing new approaches based on self-assembly and soft lithography. We aim to utilize the ease of synthesis, the small size and the often unusual properties of particles to fabricate novel materials for mechanical, electronic and optical applications. This requires creating well-defined structures from disordered molecules and particles, directing their transport on small length scales, and characterizing the structure and composition of the resulting materials.		Images, click to enlarge Fabrication across the scales: here, 500 nm polystyrene beads were printed on top of a 100-µm-sized glass bead that had been printed on a glass carrier beforehand.