Directed Self‐Assembly of Silica Nanoparticles into Nanometer‐Scale Patterned Surfaces Using Spin‐Coating

Directed self‐assembly by photostimulation of an amorphous semiconductor surface

“…Exquisite control is possible, but this approach becomes complicated and very expensive as the size scale decreases. The ''bottom-up'' strategy creates structures from smaller subunits through thermodynamically driven self-assembly, and has been employed with diverse objects such as nanotubes, 1 nanoparticles for synthesis of photonic bandgap crystals, 2,3 antibodies on gold surface for immunosensing, 4 and miniature electrical components (solder dots, wires, dies, and diodes) for electrical networks. 5,6 Cost is greatly reduced, but reliable control over patterning remains problematic due to entropy effects that become prominent at small length scales.…”

An Approach to Lithographically Defined Self‐Assembled Nanoparticle Films

“…Spin-coating processes for the self-assembly of colloidal particles have the advantages of being inexpensive, rapid, inherently parallel, and compatible with standard microfabrication processes. [10][11][12]23,24] IL can produce nanoscale periodic patterns over large areas. In particular, IL, as a top-down technique, is quite fast, low cost, reliable, and scalable-both to large areas and ultimately to volume manufacturing.…”

“…[7,8] Colloidal particle crystals and patterned colloidal particles are most often formed using processes such as gravity sedimentation, [9] spin-coating, [10][11][12] electrostatic self-assembly, [2,13] convective deposition, [14,15] and self-assembly under physical confinement. [16,17] Most reports have focused on template-directed colloidal self-assembly where the template is defined before the nanoparticles are deposited.…”

Damascene Process for Controlled Positioning of Magnetic Colloidal Nanocrystals

“…Throughout the last decade a wide range of positioning methods have been investigated, [16][17][18][19] involving, for example magnetic or electrostatic forces, [20] sedimentation, [21] layer-by-layer growth, [22] lithography, [23,24] and selective wetting. [25] Although these early attempts were successful to some extent, the preparation of large-area ordered assemblies of single NCs with low defect density and a size down to or less than 20 nm still presents problems.…”