Imaging nanoparticle self-assembly

It is believed that working out how nanoparticles are built is key to developing new ‘intelligent materials’, electronic devices and understanding the biomachinery that operates in living cells.

Scientists hope the ability to control this self-assembly will lead to the development of new technologies as well as understanding the basis for complex chemistry and, for example, the origins of life.

The researchers at Glasgow, along with colleagues at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, devised an experiment that enabled them to observe molecules being constructed around what appeared to be a transient template cluster.

The experiment involved the construction of a flow reactor system for the assembly of the nanoparticles under dynamic ‘flowing’ conditions. The scientists demonstrated that this new experimental approach allows self-assembly to be examined in a new way at the nano-level, which they claim gives rise to unprecedented mechanistic information and unmasks the complexities of molecular self-assembly.

Self-assembly describes the process by which objects form a particular arrangement without any external manipulation.