Spatially extended nonlinear dynamic systems often exhibit complex and chaotic behavior. On the other hand, a chaotic attractor contains a variety of ordered spatio-temporal patterns which are, however, unstable and thus cannot be observed. The methods of chaos control allow for a deliberate stabilization of such patterns by small changes to the system. We compare different methods of chaos control by time delay autosynchronization, and thus gain insight into processes of self-organization and nonlinear spatio-temporal dynamics of dissipative extended systems. Applications to semiconductor nanostructures will be discussed.