US Patent 7915151 - Flow alignment of nanowires

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7915151.html

This is another basic nanowire patent from Charles Lieber's group at Harvard University which has priority going back to 2000 and teaching an alignment method for semiconductor nanowires useful to form nanoscale transistors and sensors. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method of assembling one or more nanoscale elongated structures on a surface, the method comprising acts of:

(A) flowing a liquid that comprises the one or more nanoscale elongated structures onto the surface which nanoscale elongated structures have at least one portion having a smallest dimension of less than 500 nm; and

(B) aligning the one or more nanoscale elongated structures on the surface to form an array of the nanoscale elongated structures;

(C) conditioning the surface with one or more functionalities that attract the one or more nanoscale elongated structures to particular positions on the surface,

wherein act (B) comprises attracting the one or more nanoscale elongated structures to the particular positions using the one or more functionalities.