US Patent 7374599 - Method of making dendritic nanostructures

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7374599.html

Dendrimers are polymeric nanostructures having a fractal geometric structure which are useful for drug delivery and sensing due to their high surface to volume ratio. This patent from Sandia teaches a method of forming metallic dendritic nanostructures which also share high surface to volume ratio useful to applications such as sensors, solar cells, and catalysis. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method for making dendritic metal nanostructures, comprising:

forming a surfactant structure template in an aqueous solution using a surfactant;

introducing a metal ion from a metal salt and an electron donor species into said aqueous solution containing said surfactant structure template to form a reaction solution; and

reducing said metal ion to form a dendritic metal nanostructure on the surfactant structure template.