In research on biomolecular devices, Ryo Iida, a pilot student from the Hokkaido University Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, developed new surface ligands for controlling the assembly/disassembly of gold nanoparticles with temperature, and this article was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C with Iida as the first author. The surface ligands that were developed are composed of an alkyl head introduced to the end of a self-assembled oligo ethylene glycol monolayer. When these molecules modify surfaces of gold nanoparticles, assembly occurs due to a dehydration phenomenon in which, at high temperatures, the molecules give off hydrated water. This study has discovered that the temperature at which assembly occurs depends on the structure of the alkyl head and the size of the particles. These are results of current fundamental research relating to the assembly of nanoparticles, and we can anticipate that they will become important findings for uninhibitedly controlling the assembly process.