Addressing today's challenges will similarly require material advances. For example, how do we make solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently? Batteries that last longer? Ever-smaller electronic devices? Scientists are seeking solutions to these very questions through materials science and engineering. They're both improving the performance of existing materials and creating brand-new materials with unparalleled properties.

Over the past decade, scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Brookhaven National Laboratory have established themselves as leaders in this area. In particular, they are developing a new method for making materials: infiltration synthesis.

As its name suggests, infiltration synthesis involves infiltrating, or infusing, one material into another. By infusing an inorganic (non-carbon-containing) material in an organic (carbon-containing) material, one can generate a "hybrid" material with properties not seen in either of the starting components. The organic species could be polymer thin films, polymers patterned in a particular geometrical shape using a light source or electron beam (a technique known as lithography), polymers self-assembled from two or more chemically distinct "blocks" (block copolymer), or even self-assembled DNA structures. Infiltration occurs as the organic matrix is exposed to inorganic-containing gas or liquid precursors (starting materials) in an alternating order.