Electrospray self-assembly: An emerging jet-based route for directly forming nanoscaled structures

Electrosprays, a unique physical phenomenon has in the past decade or so been investigated for several applications spanning the physical and life sciences. Recently, these electrified jets were established for directly forming self-assembled structures with a range of non-conducting nanomaterials [Physica E 33 (2006) 398]. The current work demonstrates the ability to directly form functionalised building blocks in the nano-range with conducting nanoparticulates. In the remit of these investigations, we also studied whether particulate loading in suspension has an affect on the forming of these nanoscaled self-assemblies. Thus, these results have widespread promising implications for patterning a wide range of surface topographies either as near-annular islands—or track-like structures. Hence, such nano-assemblies formed by means of this top-down approach could be explored as a bottom-up methodology for encouraging cell migration to those architectures for forming cell patterns to nano-electronics, which are a few examples, respectively.