  We design dipolar quantum many-body Hamiltonians that will facilitate the
realization of exotic quantum phases under current experimental conditions
achieved for polar molecules. The main idea is to modulate both single-body
potential barriers and two-body dipolar interactions on a spatial scale of tens
of nanometers to strongly enhance energy scales and, therefore, relax
temperature requirements for observing new quantum phases of engineered
many-body systems. We consider and compare two approaches. In the first,
nanoscale barriers are generated with standing wave optical light fields
exploiting optical nonlinearities. In the second, static electric field
gradients in combination with microwave dressing are used to write
nanostructured spatial patterns on the induced electric dipole moments, and
thus dipolar interactions. We study the formation of inter-layer and interface
bound states of molecules in these configurations, and provide detailed
estimates for binding energies and expected losses for present experimental
setups.
