Interfacial nanofabrication strategies in development of new functional nanomaterials and planar supramolecular nanostructures for nanoelectronics and nanotechnology

Clusters, nanoparticles. nanowires, long molecules as nanotubes and polynucleotides, and functional supramolecular nanostructures are currently considered as potential building blocks for nanotechnology and nanoelectronic devices and circuits, and development and introduction of new methods to control effectively their structure, composition and nanoscale organization are necessary. Here we describe a number of new nanofabrication methods which are based on the monolayer techniques, biomimetic principles, interfacial reactions and interactions. The methods allowed to produce new stable reproducible planar one-dimensional and two-dimensional arrays of ligand-stabilized nanoclusters and nanoparticles on solid substrates, ultrathin polymeric nanoscale-ordered mono- and multilayer quasi-crystalline and nanocomposite films, planar polymeric complex films with integrated DNA and inorganic building blocks as semiconductor and iron oxide nanoparticle quasi-linear arrays and nanowires. Transmission electron microscopy, STM and AFM techniques were used to characterize the fabricated nanostructures. Effects related to discrete electron tunneling were observed in the monolayers of nanoclusters and small gold nanoparticles at room temperature using STM. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.