ABSTRACT
Biologically mediated assembly of nanometer-and micrometer-scale structures can have a profound impact in the fields of nanoelectronics, materials synthesis, and medical diagnostics and therapeutics. Such self-assembled structures can also find applications in microelectromechanical systems and hybrid biosensors, and have the potential to continue the scaling of Moore’s law beyond the 50 nm node. While engineers and scientists have been long aspiring to controllably and specifically manipulate structures at the micrometer and nanometer scale, nature has been performing these tasks and
assembling complex structures with great accuracy and high efficiency using highly specific biological molecules such as DNA and proteins. The use of such molecules to assemble artificial structures, synthesize new materials, and construct new interfaces is an intense area of research. This chapter describes the motivations and fundamentals behind these assembly concepts, with a focus on biologically mediated assembly, and presents the state of the art in biologically mediated assembly of artificial nanostructures and microstructures.
