Exercise 4. Fill in the blanks using terms given below:

The preparation of nanocomposites with an inorganic … such as metal nanoparticles and a protective organic … of small molar mass … or polymers is a route to obtain materials suitable for hierarchical self-organization into … . Incorporation of … into polymer matrices is particularly advantageous for materials engineering and the study of nanoparticle–matrix … . The adsorption of polymers onto a wide variety of nanoparticles is of broad industrial relevance in such areas as pharmaceuticals, photography, paints and coatings, foods, wastewater treatment, rubbers, and … and is ubiquitous in natural aqueous environments as well as in many biological organisms. Recently, … of conjugated polymers and inorganic particles have received much attention , due to the interesting high electrical … and redox properties of conjugated polymers and their extensive applications ranging from batteries to … .

Terms: core, shell, compound, nanoassemblies, nanoparticles, interactions, composite materials, nanocomposites, conductivity, light-emitting devices.

Exercise 5. Find in the text the sentence with Complex Subject and translate it.

Exercise 6. Look through the text and give a short summary of it.

Self-Assembly in Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology involves making useful devices with nanometer control in at least one dimension. Nanometer control infers that nanotechnology involves fabrication from molecular components. Therefore, in nanotechnology different molecular components must be integrated into a functional device. Such integration requires the precise positioning of individual molecules. To create this molecular organization, the fabrication of nanostructures can be achieved with either the “top-down” or the “bottom-up” fabrication methods. The potential drawbacks of top-down methods, include the materials used, usually have little chemical diversity and the approach is limited in the number of nanodevices that can be fabricated at one time . Therefore, bottom-up fabrication from molecular components possesses far more promise in enabling the nanotechnology revolution to be fully realized. Bottom-up fabrication can be achieved either through the

physical placement of individual atoms and molecules, or via self-assembly. The former invokes images of either molecular assemblers, which have been elegantly demonstrated by the iron corrals and molecular abacus assembled by the IBM research labs, or the single placement of phosphorous atoms on silicon surfaces as part of the development of silicon-based quantum computers. In common with top-down fabrication, the physical placement of individual atoms, or molecules, has the disadvantage of low throughput of devices. Therefore, self-assembly appears to be the most likely strategy for developing a generic approach to the fabrication of functional nanodevices. Self-assembly is how nature makes molecular machines. From linear sequences of amino acids, nanomachines like enzymes and ion channels form through spontaneous folding (sometimes with a little chaperoning) into functional conformations. The essence of self-assembly is that no external intervention is required once the process has started. That is, the rules for organization are encoded into the molecular structure and the conditions used.