NanoSonic has exclusively licensed nine patents covering electrostatic self-assembly (ESA) processing and use from Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties (VTIP), Inc., and has separately developed its own intellectual property to enable process, material, and device commercialization. ESA allows the ultra-uniform formation of multiple, nanometer-thick layers of material into functional thin films, and recent modifications allow the formation of thicker films and bulk materials.

Our company has created a "library" of self-assembled materials, many of them based on ESA processing, and has demonstrated the synthesis of more than 2000 individual material layers. We have also developed measurement capabilities to rapidly evaluate materials and new modifications to the self-assembly processes.

ESA processing involves the simple dipping of a chosen substrate into alternate aqueous solutions containing anionic and cationic materials such as: complexes of polymers; metal and oxide nanoclusters; cage-structured molecules such as fullerenes; and proteins and other biomolecules. Design of these individual precursor molecules, and control of the order of the multiple molecular layers through the thickness of the film, allow control over macroscopic electrical, optical, magnetic, thermal, mechanical, and other properties, important to many engineering devices and applications.

The nearly perfect molecular order of the individual monolayers is the net result of many individual molecules seeking local least energy configurations when adsorbed from water solutions to bond with molecules already attached at the substrate surface. The interpenetration of molecules in adjacent layers may be controlled to benefit macroscopic material and device characteristics.