Molecular Self-Assembly
In the nanoworld, systems can be designed to self-organize into ordered structures. For engineering purposes, this phenomenon can be exploited to produce tiniest structures or for self-healing materials [5].
We currently investigate molecular-scale self-assembly using liquid-cell atomic force microscopy (AFM) [3], [5], [6], [9], [11], [12], [19], [21], [22], [27] for sensing applications and to reveal the structural secrets of silk, a complex, biological material.
Prof. Schniepp has a long-standing expertise in self-assembly of surfactant molecules at the solid—liquid interface [3], [5], [6], [9], [11], [12], [19], [21], [22], [27]. Surfactants often make micelle-like structures the on surface with feature size of just a few nanometers. These structures can be visualized using liquid-cell AFM, which is an excellent tool to study them. Surfactants are crucial in many applications, such as detergency, oil recovery, and corrosion inhibition [12]; they are also a self-healing model system [5].
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