Molecular self-assembly is a common principle of structure formation in natural and synthetic materials. The cooperative assembly of molecular building blocks into ordered super-structures is generally driven by weak, non-covalent intermolecular forces. In our group, we study these formation principles and exploit them for the assembly of responsive nanomaterials with distinct optical properties and adaptive nanomaterials that interact with their environment.

The phase separation of block copolymers occurs typically on the length scale of 5 to 50 nm. Fine tuning of structure formation and translation into inorganic thin film architectures allows access to intricate material arrangements that are not feasible by conventional nanofabrication techniques. We are interested in how control over sub-wavelength structural properties, such as pore dimensions, pore volume and film thickness, enables the building of nanoarchitectures with unique material properties. Examples include photoanodes for solar cells and water splitting, porous one- and three-dimensional photonic crystals as well as self-cleaning antireflective optical coatings.

Adaptive nanomaterials may even rely on a more precise morphological arrangement for their function. To this end, we study the self-assembly of binary ligand mixtures on gold nanoparticles. Our group has pioneered how nanoparticles may change their solvation properties as a result of interaction with specific stimuli. This can be exploited for a variety of applications in (bio-)chemical sensing and allows specific and quantitative detection by the naked eye, e.g. for off-site dose monitoring of patients or contamination detection in drinking water.