  It is widely accepted that self-assembling building blocks is one of the
promising ways for engineering new materials. Recent years reveal substantial
progress in fabricating colloidal particles, polymer blocks and supramolecular
aggregates of organic molecules. Despite of substantial progress in molecular
self-assembly there is still a lack of simple blocks made of "solid matter"
(e.g. metals, oxides etc.) with well-defined crystal structure and spatial
order. Here we demonstrate that ordered arrays of metal nanoclusters can be
fabricated by self-assembly on a wide range of oxide templates. These
nano-templates are produced either by depositing an alien oxide film or by
oxidizing a metal/metal oxide substrate.
