New Materials in the Nanoscale from Fullerenes, Silicon Clusters and Biomolecules

Molecular nanostructures are a broad class of systems with diverse behavior and possibilities for practical application, depending mainly on the characteristics of the building units. We briefly discuss some remarkable examples, namely, materials built from fullerenes, inorganic clusters and polypeptides. The emphasis is on the insights into the physics and chemistry of these various materials gained by using density-functional-theory based calculations.