6. What does the future hold for colloids?

The field of colloids is currently (2007) undergoing rapid expansion. Two major areas of development can easily be identified:

1. Nanofabrication, which exploits the self-assembling properties of chemical structures (polymers, nanoparticles, surfactants, etc.) to create new devices such as those shown in the figures 13 or 20 using an approach currently referred to as bottom-up, which appears to be easier and more economical to implement than top-down...