Inorganic Clusters Look Like Living Viruses, University of Michigan Study
By exploiting a delicate balance of atomic forces, researchers can create nanoparticle superclusters that are uniform in sizeāan important factor in a variety of nanotech applications. In another instance of forces behaving in unexpected ways at the nanoscale, scientists discovered that if you start with small nanoscale building blocks that are varied enough in size, the electrostatic repulsion force and van der Waals attraction force will balance each other and limit the growth of the clusters, enabling formations that are uniform in size. The findings are published in the Nature Nanotechnology.