Self assembly of magnetic nanorings using a viral template

尽管在过去十年中在合成纳米尺寸的组件方面取得了许多进展，但将这些组件组装成确定性和可控的图案仍然是该领域的主要挑战。需要这种控制来生产具有明确定义和可再现特性的分子尺度电子、光子和磁性器件。由于在这种长度尺度上对材料进行“自上而下”的操作要么是有问题的，要么是不可能的，研究人员已经着手开发方法，通过这些方法，溶液中的不同组分可以以有序的方式聚集在一起。这个过程被称为自组装，如果组件被正确编码，那么它是非常有效的。

Although there have been many advances in the last decade in synthesizing nanosized components, the assembly of these components into deterministic and controllable patterns remains a major challenge in the field. Such control is required to produce molecular scale electronic, photonic, and magnetic devices that have well-defined and reproducible properties. Because "top-down" manipulation of materials on this length scale is either problematic or impossible, researchers have set out to develop methods by which different components in solution can come together in an ordered fashion. This process, termed self assembly, is very efficient provided the components are properly encoded to do so.