Biological molecules like proteins, peptides, lipids, and nucleic acids can efficiently self-assemble into precise #nanostructures.
The concept of spontaneous, bottom-up formation of nanoscale architectures, driven by weak interaction forces between molecular building blocks, holds significant promise for materials science applications.
However, to extract the advantages of this nanofabrication approach, we must better understand the underlying forces that lead to the formation of both the structures and the defects in synthetic self-assembly networks.
An international research team used advanced X-ray nanotomography at the #SwissLightSource #SLS to map synthetic crystalline structures on the nanoscale fabricated by self-assembly. They analyzed nearly 70,000 crystal unit cells, each just tens of nanometers in size, with high-resolution X-ray computed #tomography.
This new method has potential applications in #materials #science, and the findings are published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Image: Dmitry Karpov (PSI)