Over the last decades, biology has made significant advances in providing a rational understanding of the molecular mechanisms governing life’s processes. New materials have emerged from life systems, which physicists and chemists have then promptly fabricated, manipulated and addressed at the molecular scale. The emblematic example is DNA technology, which affords the elaboration of programmable chemical synthesis routes to build complex architectures and functions with molecular precision, and sheds light on a new generation of robust tools. During this same period, the semiconductor industry’s development has lead to impressive performance in miniaturisation. Its current challenge though, is to develop lithographic technology for feature sizes below 20 nm and explore new classes of electronic devices based on carbon nanotubes and nanowires. A central challenge in technology is constructing multi-scale structures used to organize nanodevices and functional materials. The marriage of the top-down and bottom-up fabrication methods paves the way to arrange complex molecular nano units, to electronically address and integrate them into a functional device. Future successes in this cross-disciplinary research field call for consortia that largely exceed the level of national programs; European consortia are necessary to rapidly reach new achievements.
Bio-inspired nanosytems and nanomaterials - DNA technologies - Functionalisations - Multi scale structures - Integrated bio-nano systems.
