Breath figure

Personally I don't like breath figure (J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 1990, 23, 1265-1266. doi: 10.1088/0022-3727/23/9/021) approach because it has nothing to do with self-assembly, I mean at molecular scale, therefore it is old-fashioned. Previous papers of breath figure approach appear only on journals like Macromolecules or Langmuir. But recently I came across one on ACIE (2007. DOI: 10.1002/anie.200604889); someone yield rings of gold nanorods via breath figure effect. It is significant because it is the first achievement of ring-like assembly of nano object, 'in stark contrast, self-assembly of nano-building blocks into mesoscale structures with long range order has been a challenge since people were tired of simply synthesis of these nano objects. Fortunately the author did not call their work as self-assembly 'spontanous' assembly instead) because it is not a self-assembly, but a breath-figure-aided assembly. True self-assembly of gold nanorods into rings is still unachieved. And the authors only report the morphology they obtained; no answers to whether some spectial effects are shown due to the ring-like assembly of nanorods, e.g. surface enhanced raman sepectra where gold nanorods are known to be very sensitive.