Designing porous patterns

Belgian chemists are finally getting to grips with how to control the way molecules arrange themselves at the solid-liquid interface. They've harnessed the knowledge to make porous patterns that could be used to trap reacting molecules or impart interesting chemical, optical or electronic properties to a surface.

Presenting at the second International symposium on advancing the chemical sciences (Isacs 2) in Budapest, Hungary, Steven De Feyter from the Catholic University of Leuven explained how his group has designed combinations of molecules that can be arranged into centimetre-scale, regular patterns on graphite and gold surfaces. The pattern that forms can be regulated by tweaking the size or concentration of the molecules and the nature of the solvent they're dissolved in or the surface they're applied to.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/July/19071001.asp