Chemists and physicists have succeeded in getting custom-shaped microparticles to interact and self-assemble in a controlled way in a liquid crystal.
The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in the Nov. 20 edition of the journal Science.
"We're learning the rules about how these lithographic particles self-assemble," said Thomas G. Mason, a UCLA professor of chemistry and physics and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. "This method may enable us to cause them to assemble in desired configurations."