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Creating such devices means not just figuring out how to make them work but also how to mass produce them: One little tiny chip is science; a billion is industry. But in nanomanufacturing, you can't just set up an assembly line. Making use of atomic-level forces to create self-assembly is essential, since properly designed molecular pieces will attract each other. It's as if Ford could build a bunch of car bodies and then have bumpers, rearview mirrors and hood ornaments float into place and attach themselves automatically.

Materials science graduate student Floraine Collette, left, and research associate professor Jerome Claverie look at images of nanoparticles.

The other goal is just as important, and more fundamental: to help researchers and companies build nanosized devices more easily. The key here is templates.

"We need to create tools that are able to select and orient nanotubes and other nanoscale objects on a surface. The point isn't to do it once, but to incorporate the templates into a high-rate, high-volume process," says Miller.

With this in mind, his group has synthesized a huge molecule made of thiols and carboxylic acids connected to soccer-ball-shaped fullerene molecules. In the proper chemical soup, these molecules align to create huge sheets—huge by nanostandards, anyway—with the fullerenes poking up in neat arrays less than three nanometers apart, like a molecular apple orchard stretching to infinity. The right sort of nanotubes will be attracted to this "orchard," creating a nanowire array that can be scooped up and placed on an electronic device.

Another approach to templates is being tested by physicist Karsten Pohl, an assistant professor of physics and a member of the materials science group, who is looking into making very thin sheets of metal atoms with neatly arranged molecule-sized holes in them. Nanotubes can be placed upright in these sulfur-filled cavities, creating a regular array of components ready to be used in industrial applications-in theory, at least.

"Anybody trying to make a nanodevice has similar problems—to manipulate nano elements and place them in selected positions. The goal is to develop template tools that could be used by virtually anybody, for any product," says Miller. "Essentially, we're making wrenches. Very, very small wrenches."

But wrenches for what? What is nano-technology, anyway?

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