Technologies in sensors, MEMS, drug delivery, computing, robotics, and other applications will increasingly require controlled assemblies of colloidal and nanocolloidal particles. Such small structures must be fabricated from the “bottom-up”, meaning that the particles must be designed so that they can assemble themselves. Thus, just as atoms assemble into molecules with structures ranging in complexity from carbon monoxide to DNA, our goal is to design and synthesize particles that self-assemble into larger structures. We are currently working with polymer, oxide, and metal particles.

Several techniques exist to produce simple bottom-up assemblies, and all techniques have limitations. In this talk a new method from our lab called “particle lithography” will be presented. Currently we have used this technique to produce high-yield, accurate heterodoublets of micron size particles, and initial trials have also shown success in producing “water molecules” (one large particle with two others attached at controlled angles). The particle lithography process uses nanoscale unit operations that look quite different from traditional chemical engineering applications, with a focus on “just-in-time” and “just-in-place”. Techniques for engineering the nanoscale unit ops will be presented, with the aim of producing scalable, portable, low-cost methods for producing a wide range of colloidal assemblies.