Patterning and colloids for electronics

The novel electronic, mechanical, catalytic, magnetic and optical properties and the related technological applications of the nanostructured surfaces obtained upon the deposition of clusters have been widely studied by researchers. Clusters and colloids are small structures made of several thousand atoms.
Electronic devices using clusters as components could use these quantum mechanical effects to their advantage, resulting in a faster, smaller and more efficient computer. Metallic nanoclusters and molecular wires can be combined to fabricate a two-dimensional super lattice consisting of nanometer sized conductive clusters which are electronically linked by organic molecules.

The procedure is to first form a monolayer of nano crystals of uniform size and use molecules with functional groups that bond strongly to the colloid. This could be exploited in many fields of the electronic industry.

These include devices and materials which employ nano scale elements to realize local interconnects for integrated circuits with minimum feature sizes of less than 0.1 micron, electronic devices with extremely high densities of computational or memory cells, chemical sensors with high sensitivity and selectivity, and cluster engineered materials with enhanced optical and magnetic properties.