The simplicity of “bottom up” self-assembly has long vied with the extreme control of more painstaking “top down” lithography techniques for nanofabrication. Now the self-assembly of reproducible arrays of flat spirals—where even the chirality of the structures can be controlled by design—has demonstrated not just the impressive level of control that can be achieved using templated block copolymers, but also an understanding of the energetics driving the process. As well as a simple approach for producing spiral structures that could be transferred into functional materials, the work provides insights into this kind of self-assembly that may eventually be useful for simple fabrication of other complex structures for photonics and electronics applications………
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/68366
