The fabrication of assemblies of particles having the same reproducible properties is of large interest for many domains in nanosciences, as for instance magnetic recording [1] , catalysis [2] , nanophotonics [3] or information technologies [4,5] . A driving motivation is to reproduce at the larger micrometric scale the dramatic physical effects arising at the single nanoparticle level. Targeted advantages include larger and robust signals, together with cheaper, simpler and scalable device fabrication process circumventing the technological bottleneck of contacting a single nano-object. This is a major issue for single-electron electronics, based on the discreteness of the electron charge, considered as a serious alternative to CMOS technology because of its very low power consumption and high-speed performance, with foreseen applications as sensors, memories, and multi-logic devices [4,6] . The key property in single electron device ('SED') is the discreteness of energy levels in metallic or semiconducting nanostructures, which results in welldefined Coulomb blockade ('CB') oscillations of the conductance when observed at the nanometer scale of a single nano-object, for example a nanocluster ('NC') or a molecule.However, despite those striking features, SED remains blocked at the stage of laboratory experiments. On the one hand, contacting and patterning a single NC with the required nanometric precision is a very challenging and expensive technological task. On the other hand,