Buckyball leads to 3D breakthrough
17 Jan 2011 by Evoluted New Media
A ‘guest’ molecule has led to a major breakthrough in nanotechnology by allowing scientists to build 3D structures on a surface, a discovery which may lead to cutting-edge nano devices.
A ‘guest’ molecule has led to a major breakthrough in nanotechnology by allowing scientists to build 3D structures on a surface, a discovery which may lead to cutting-edge nano devices.
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Buckyball enables scientists to build 3D structures |
A team of scientists from the University of Nottingham have shown that by introducing a guest molecule – C60 or buckyball – to a surface, additional molecules will arrange themselves spontaneously into a rational 3D structure.
“It is the molecular equivalent of throwing a pile of bricks up into the air and then as they come down again they spontaneously build a house,” said Professor Neil Champness who led the research, “Until now this has only been achievable in 2D, so to continue the analogy the molecular ‘bricks’ would only form a path or a patio but our breakthrough now means that we can start to build in the third dimension. It’s a significant step forward to nanotechnology.”
The guest molecule was introduced to a surface patterned by an array of tetracarboxylic acid molecules – the spherical shape of the buckyball means that they sit above the surface of the molecule and encourage other molecules to form around them.
“C60 was chosen as our guest molecule due to its spherical shape,” Champness told Laboratory News, “The C60 adopts weak interactions with the hydrogen bonding tetracarboxylic acid molecule that forms the self-assembled network. As the C60 protrudes away from the surface, due to its shape, so the tetracarboxylic acid molecules assemble around it thus forming the bilayer structure.”
The technique offers a new and controlled way of building up additional layers on the surface molecule, and could provide a significant step forward in the development of nano devices like cutting-edge optical and electronic technologies, and even molecular computers.
“The next step for our work involves developing these studies further to create structures that assemble into larger arrays, away from the surface and to introduce functionality, such as magnetism and electronic properties into the array,” Champness told Laboratory News, “Ultimately these will have applications in targets such as molecular computing and information storage but this is a long way off!”
