A natural goal of most nanoscience projects, independent of the specific subfield they belong to, is to create a system providing novel functions which originate from the properties of its constituent nanoscale parts. Although the preparation of individual nanoobjects such as dots or wires of various materials is in principle possible, the analysis of their chemical and physical properties still poses a serious experimental challenge; ordered ensembles of nanoobjects with a narrow size distribution are needed. Much progress has been made during the last decade based on this idea of exploiting the self-organization of organic building blocks on top of inorganic supports, and a huge number of self-assembled structures have been prepared.