Complexity for nanotechnology: Exploiting organization in the nanoworld

Given the importance of nanomaterials and nanostructures in modern technology, in the past decades much effort has been directed to set up efficient protocols for nanoparticle synthesis. Since nanoparticles tend to spontaneously grow and their properties are critically size/shape/composition-dependent, a useful synthetic route should allow fine size, shape and chemical composition control and, more importantly, should permit to govern their spontaneous or directed assembling and interconnections to form structures at higher level of complexity with designed properties and functionalities. The aim of this contribution is to furnish to the reader a panoramic view of this exciting problematic and of the recently developed methods employed for obtaining complex nanostructure-based systems