RECEIVED DATE (to be automatically inserted after your manuscript is accepted if required according to the journal that you are submitting your paper to)In this work we present results from an experimental study of ordering characteristics in monolayers of polystyrene nanospheres self-assembled at a water-air interface. We demonstrate that the interaction of spheres, governed by the dissemination of surface charge, leads to the formation of macroscopic closepacked ordered areas or 'domains' with a well defined orientation of the lattice axes over areas of 25 mm². It was found that by changing the surface chemistry of the spheres it is possible to modify the balance between the attractive and repulsive forces and thus to control the ordering characteristics. We implemented a model which simulates the process of self-assembly and examines the ordering characteristics for layers with different ratio between attractive and repulsive forces. A good qualitative agreement was found between the simulations and experiment. These studies are technologically relevant as a method of producing nanosphere templates for large area patterned materials.2

We show that naturally occurring chitinous nanostructures found on the wings of the Graphium butterfly can be used as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering when coated with a thin film of gold or silver. The substrates were found to exhibit excellent biocompatibility and sensitivity, making them ideal for protein assaying. An assay using avidin/biotin binding showed that the substrates could be used to quantify protein binding directly from changes in the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra and were sensitive over a concentration range comparable with a typical enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) assay. A biomimetic version of the wing nanostructures produced using a highly reproducible, large-scale fabrication process, yielded comparable enhancement factors and biocompatibility. The excellent biocompatibility of the wings and biomimetic substrates is unparalleled by other lithographically produced substrates, and this could pave the way for widespread application of ultrasensitive SERS-based bioassays.

We report a combined experimental and theoretical study of the quasistatic hysteresis and dynamic excitations in large-area arrays of NiFe nanodisks forming a hexagonal lattice with the lattice constant of 390 nm. Arrays were fabricated by patterning a 20-nm-thick NiFe film using the etched nanosphere lithography. We have studied a close-packed (edge-to-edge separation between disks dcp = 65 nm) and an ultraclosed packed (ducp = 20 nm) array. Hysteresis loops for both arrays were qualitatively similar and nearly isotropic, i.e., independent on the in-plane external field orientation. The shape of these loops revealed that magnetization reversal is governed by the formation and expulsion of vortices inside the nanodisks. When we assumed that the nanodisks’ magnetization significantly decreases near their edges, micromagnetic simulations with material parameters deter-mined independently from continuous film measu-rements could satisfactorily reproduce the hysteresis. Despite the isotropic hysteresis, significant in-plane anisotropy of the dynamic response of the ultraclose-packed array was found experimentally by the all-electrical spin-wave spectroscopy and Brillouin light scattering. Dynamical simulations could successfully reproduce the difference between excitation spectra for fields directed along the two main symmetry axes of the hexagonal lattice. Simulations revealed that this difference is caused by the magnetodipolar interaction between nanodisks, which leads to a strong variation of the spatial distribution of the oscillation power both for bulk and edge modes as a function of the bias field orientation. Comparison of simulated and measured frequencies enabled the unambiguous identification of experimentally observed modes. Results of this systematic research are relevant both for fundamental studies of spin-wave modes in patterned magnetic structures and for the design of magnonic crystals for potential applications as, e.g., spin-wave guides and filters

We report a study of the dispersion of spin waves in a hexagonal array of interacting ferromagnetic nanodisks for two orthogonal orientations of the in-plane applied magnetic field, i.e., either parallel or perpendicular to the direction of first neighbour disks. The experimental data were modelled using the dynamical matrix method, and the results were interpreted in terms of the effective wave vector model. We have found that spin waves propagating in the two orthogonal directions exhibit marked asymmetry concerning the existence of maxima/minima in their dispersion curves and the sign of their group velocities

A dense plane periodical array of cylindrical magnetic nanodots has been fabricated using a lithographic mask formed by self-organization of polystyrene nanospheres. In this paper, we study collective static and dynamic magnetic behavior of this array. We find that this technique produces samples with reasonably small dispersion of magnetic parameters of individual dots. This is evidenced by magnetometry and well-resolved discrete frequencies of standing spin waves measured with cavity and coplanar-waveguide ferromagnetic resonance. The standing spin wave resonances could be reliably observed in a large range of frequencies (4-15 GHz). However the measured linewidth of resonances is about ten times larger than for unpatterned Permalloy. This may be due to some variation in shape and magnetic parameters from dot to dot resulting in inhomogeneous broadening of the resonance lines.