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Droplets can be made to chase each other around a track and even self-assemble into devices, simply by mixing two everyday liquids. This remarkable discovery made by scientists in the US has already been used to create beautiful shapes and patterns, and could also be exploited to create optical components that assemble themselves and even to clean surfaces. It looks very like Jojo's self-assembling balls :p

A toc of a spcial issue on synthetic biology: How to assemble organisms from scratch. Could one day be intersting for large scale deterministic self assembly or some other crazy idea...

Maybe something to look at for Ricarda? Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a first-of-its-kind self-healing gel that repairs and connects electronic circuits, creating opportunities to advance the development of flexible electronics, biosensors and batteries as energy storage devices. "There's no need for heat or light to fix the crack or break in a circuit or battery, which is often required by previously developed self-healing materials." Yu and his team created the self-healing gel by combining two gels: a self-assembling metal-ligand gel that provides self-healing properties and a polymer hydrogel that is a conductor.

Ricarda??

With self-assembly guiding the steps and synchronization providing the rhythm, a new class of materials forms dynamic, moving structures in an intricate dance. Researchers have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube.

This is quite similar to the following paper. Here they show how tiny variations of particle parameters can produce clearly distinct structures: Thermal and Athermal Swarms of Self-Propelled Particles --> http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0180

Quote: "This is exactly what we are pursuing - self-assembling materials that organize at smaller sizes, say, less than 20 or even 10 nanometers"

Direct Self-Assembly (DSA) is one of the competitors for the next-generation 'lithography' together with direct-write via electron beam and the more traditional extreme UV (EUV) lithography. Although there are huge benefits to use DSA, the technology does have some drawbacks when it comes to line edge roughness. It seems however particularly good for repetitive structures that are used in memory chips. As long as EUV is struggling to get it working, DSA definitely has a fighting chance to enter the market one day.

The authors report a simple self-assembly technique for fabricating antireflection coatings that mimic antireflective moth eyes. Wafer-scale, nonclose-packed colloidal crystals with remarkable large hexagonal domains are created by a spin-coating technolo

beautiful research, and fascinating how fast these polymers seem to self assemble at exit ...

Using the angular momentum transmitted by an internal flywheel as an impulse, these cubes can move, jump, roll across the ground and climb over and around one another. They stick together using a set of small magnets, smart !

That is indeed a great way of using modular robots to build larger structures. I think we did bump into this some time back, but never really considered it much. Considering now the working group on structure assembling, I think we should add it to the list of building strategies and seriously consider it.

Bio-inspired assembly of fluorescent molecules boosts the fluorescence output.

Nice read! It is actually part of the Ariadna PETE study of one of the teams. You can supervise if you want :)

Looks like a combo of several ideas in our stock: nanomat + dna + self assembly...

On the way towards autonomous flying deliveries and building a Megazord formation!

New method could help to reconnect injured organs or build functional human tissues from the ground up

check the video

Surprising to who?

To MIT I guess ;-)

Perhaps interesting for the SPS self-assembling

nice, read only the abstract so far but looks to me like a bit of 19th century crystallography reinvented ...

No Abstract available (??)

A popular article about a real paper.