Soft matter materials typically have mesoscopic structures with length scales intermediate between the atomic and macroscopic. Because of the relatively small length scales involved, small external fields (external stresses, electric and magnetic fields, and thermal fluctuations) can lead to large perturbations in the soft matter structure and stratification. Soft matter structures fluctuate, exhibit Brownian motion, and can self-assemble in more complex systems and can sometimes produce hierarchical levels. Materials made with soft matter materials are used in numerous applications, e.g., drug targeting, microfluidic sensors, structural and packaging materials, foams, adhesives, detergents, cosmetics, paints, food additives, lubricants, fuel additives, and rubber uses. Field-assisted self-assembly, e.g., through magnetic or electrostatic forces, in nano– and micro– particulate-laden fluids occurs under the mutual interaction of the field force and surface ten-sion force when the former – the field force – exceeds the latter. At the microscale, the field force can effectively compete with the surface force to produce aggregates (since at this scale the gravitational force does not play a significant role). This can be exploited for use in various microscale applications. Here, I discuss some concepts that I have explored with my colleagues in the papers “A strategy for the assembly of 3-D mesoscopic structures using a ferrofluid” by R. Ganguly, A.P. Gaind, I.K. Puri in Physics of Fluids (Vol 17, 2005), and in “A scaling analysis to characterize thermomagnetic convection” by A. Mukhopadhyay, R. Ganguly, S. Sen, I.K. Puri that was published in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (Vol, 48, 2005, pp. 3485-3492).