Self-Assembled Nanospheres : An Exciting Playground

Dear colleagues, It is a difficult task to keep the balance between a whimsical after-dinner speech and a serious scientific presentation. I have decided to entertain you with, in my opinion, a very exciting aspect of nanophysics. Talking about nanostructures, there are two approaches for creation, the first one is producing these nanoobjects by lithography, the second is to copy nature and utilize self-assembly. Here I want to discuss a very simple system, namely, self-assembly of nanospheres in the diameter range between a few μm and 10 nm and to demonstrate with three examples what one can do with them.