ABSTRACT
The process of self-organization can be spontaneous and can be tuned by some external parameter in some systems. The process of self-organization can be classical or quantum in nature, and it involves all the components of the system. Self-organization occurs in a variety of physical, chemical, biological, social, and cognitive systems such as the collection of atoms interacting with the electromagnetic field, chemical oscillations, bacterial colonies, animal swarming and neural networks. Physicist IIya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize for his work on the thermodynamic concept of self-organization. In biology, spontaneous protein folding and pattern formation in bacterial colonies are popular examples. Self-organization of gold nanoparticles on surfaces could be tuned by altering the ionic strength of the nanoparticle solution. Spontaneous self-organization enables dielectrophoresis of small nanoparticles and formation of photoconductive microbridges. Phenomena from mathematics and computer science such as cellular automata, random graphs artificial life exhibit features of self-organization.
