Research published in March 2013 studies the American Chemical Society journal ASC Nano sheds light on self-assembly on a nano scale.
A lamellar structure is a tiny layers of alternating materials. Adult human bones have a lamellar structure. Lamellar structures are of interest when exploring the creation metastructures with unique characteristics.
From the abstract:
Uniform lamellar silver nanoleaves (AgNLs) were spontaneously assembled from 4 nm silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) with p-aminothiophenol (PATP) as mediator under mild shaking at room temperature. The compositions of the AgNLs were verified to be
1 nm Ag25 nanoclusters and PATP molecules in quinonoid model. [ … ] Different reaction parameters including the types and concentrations of ligands, solvents, reaction temperature, ionic strength, and pH, etc., were carefully studied to confirm this mechanism. Finally, the preliminary investigations of the applications for AgNLs as “molecular junctions” and SERS properties were demonstrated. We expect that this convenient and simple method can be in principle extended to other systems, or even mixture system with different types of NPs, and will provide an important avenue for designing metamaterials and exploring their physicochemical properties.
Access to this article can be found at the ASC Nano website. The authors are Lun Li and Qiangbin Wang of the Suzhou Key Laboratory of Nanobiomedical Characterization and the Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
