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HIERARCHICAL ASSEMBLY

Self-assembly across scales

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 501–502 (2022)Cite this article

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Coupling between nanoscale self-assembly and capillary pattern formation leads to ordered thin films with multiscale structure spanning six orders of magnitude.

Material properties derive from the structural organization of their constituent parts, such as atoms, molecules and nanocrystals. Creating materials with properties that enable multiple functions often requires structure control at multiple scales1. For example, the photoluminescence of quantum dots depends sensitively on their nanoscale dimensions, while the diffraction of visible light derives from larger features on the micrometre scale. Ideally, the desired multiscale order should emerge spontaneously during the assembly process as exemplified by many biological materials (for example, assembly of DNA and histones to form chromosomes). In practice, however, it remains challenging to direct the formation of materials — especially inorganic materials — with structural features at disparate scales. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Haixiang Han and co-workers2 report how semiconductor nanoclusters can be assembled to form patterned thin films with features spanning six orders of magnitude in size. Structure at multiple scales is achieved by coupling self-assembly at the nanoscale with capillary pattern formation at the microscale to create macroscopic films. The resulting materials exhibit properties such as photoluminescence, circular and linear dichroism, and optical diffraction, which derive from features at different scales.

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Fig. 1: Nanoscale self-assembly meets capillary pattern formation.

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  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kyle J. M. Bishop

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  1. Kyle J. M. Bishop
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Correspondence to Kyle J. M. Bishop.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Bishop, K.J.M. Self-assembly across scales. Nat. Mater. 21, 501–502 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01235-z

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