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This review describes the use of breath figures as a templating method for the fabrication of self‐assembled polymeric‐ and nanoparticle‐based micro‐ and nanostructures. If moist air is blown over a solution of a polymer or stabilized nanoparticles in an organic solvent, such as carbon disulfide, benzene, or chloroform, evaporative cooling leads to the formation of water droplets on the liquid surface. The monodisperse droplets arrange into a hexagonal array and sink into the polymer solution. Removal of the solvent and the water leaves an imprint of the water droplets as a hollow, air‐filled, hexagonally ordered, polymeric bubble array. Progress in the field of breath‐figure formation is reviewed. The application of breath figures for the generation of functional structures in chemistry and materials science is discussed.

A major challenge in nanoscience and nanotechnology is the rational assembly of nanoscale objects. Here we report that gold nanorods, aspect ratio 18, can be functionalized with a biotin disulfide, and subsequent addition of streptavidin links the rods together in an end-to-end manner much more often than expected.

A sensor array containing six non-covalent gold nanoparticle-fluorescent polymer conjugates has been created to detect, identify and quantify protein targets. The polymer fluorescence is quenched by gold nanoparticles; the presence of proteins disrupts the nanoparticle-polymer interaction, producing distinct fluorescence response patterns. These patterns are highly repeatable and are characteristic for individual proteins at nanomolar concentrations, and can be quantitatively differentiated by linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Based on a training matrix generated at protein concentrations of an identical ultraviolet absorbance at 280 nm (A280 = 0.005), LDA, combined with ultraviolet measurements, has been successfully used to identify 52 unknown protein samples (seven different proteins) with an accuracy of 94.2%. This work demonstrates the construction of novel nanomaterial-based protein detector arrays with potential applications in medical diagnostics.