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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The bottom up approach for engineering nanostructures, starting from stable building blocks such as molecules or nanoparticles has become an increasingly used technique. Due to the sticky nature of the world at nanolevel the human assisted construction of nanostructures is extremely complicated. An easier solution is to design nanostructures that self-assemble, driven by pre-existing forces or geometrical constraint between the building-blocks. I will investigate and model two different nano-level system that self-assemble through capillary effects. The first system is a suspension of polystyrene nanospheres drying on silica subtsrate. The second one is composed by vertically alligned carbon nanotubes, immersed in a liquid and dried. The patterns obtained in both systems present practical interest for the fabrication of nanodevices and can be described by simple mechanical spring-block type models. Computer simulations of the model reveals the influence of the relevant parameters on the obtained structures, the dynamics leading to pattern formation and suggests new methods to obtain more ordered structures.