I set up a google email alert for “self assembly” a while back – at the time I was hoping for the first stories of robots building robots, but it turns out that nanoscale is where it’s at. This technique is simple but fantastic! The last interesting one I saw appeared several months ago; it also used surface tension, but to arrange particles in a grid of prepared grooves instead of in a monolayer.
Check out the links below for more detail.
Unlike previous techniques, Eah’s new method has no need for a vacuum.