Precision chemical engineering: integrating nanolithography and nanoassembly

Precise control over functional three-dimensional nanoarchitectures and how to integrate them across different length scales is a significant challenge in nanoscience and nanoengineering. In recent years, hybrid top-down/bottom-up processes, which combines the precision of lithographic techniques and the parallelism of self-assembly—what might be termed precision chemical engineering, have been actively pursued for realising such a major task. Lithographic radiative techniques, including ultraviolet (UV) light, X-rays and electron-beam (e-beam), have been used for creating nanostructured surfaces on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), which offer unprecedented range of surface chemical functionalities. Generation of three-dimensional nanostructures by self-organisation of self-assembled nanoscale components onto nanopatterned SAM surface templates has also been demonstrated. Nevertheless, these methodologies are in their early stages offering ample opportunity for further research and process development.