(From the Publisher)Focusing on both academic questions and applications of self-assembly of this extremely important class of compounds, this book discusses not only the self-organization of inorganic and magnetic nanocrystals, but also their collective optical and magnetic properties, as well as the in-situ fabrication of metal nanoparticles in solid matrices.

Professor Marie-Paule Pileni, a distinguished leader in this field, is joined by a select group of expert authors to provide 13 chapters covering important aspects of self-assembled nanomaterials. The result is invaluable reading for inorganic and physical chemists, colloid chemists, polymer chemists, materials scientists, physicists, and chemical engineers working with and/or developing nanoparticle systems.

Professor Marie-Paule Pileni: She is a distinguished Professor and Director of LM2N at the Paris VI University and chair of Institute University de France. She started her career in gas-phase photochemistry and moved into photobiology and solar energy research. This involved using organized media to chemically modify enzymes and controlling the size and shape of inorganic nanomaterials. She developed self-organied nanocrystals and discovered important collective properties of such crystals . Marie-Paule Pileni has received the Lanmuir award of the ACS, the lecture award of the Japanese Chamical Society, the Research Award fo the Humboldt Founction in Germany, the Descartes-Huygens Prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science. She is the 25th hightest cited scientist in nanotechnology (with an average of 9.64 citations per paper, according to Science Watch, July-August, 2003).