Directed Self-Assembly
of Densely Packed Gold Nanoparticles
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Abstract
Directing the self-assembly of sub-10-nm nanoparticles
has been
challenging because of the simultaneous requirements to achieve a
densely packed monolayer and rearrange nanoparticles to assemble within
a template. We met both requirements by separating the processes into
two steps by first forming a monolayer of gold nanoparticles on a
suitable liquid subphase of anisole and then transferring it edgewise
onto a silicon substrate with a prepatterned template comprising nanoposts
and nanogratings. Doing so resulted in nanoparticles that assembled
in commensuration with the template design while exhibiting appreciable
template-induced strain. These dense arrays of nanostructures could
either be directly applied or used as lithographic masks in applications
for light collection, chemical sensing, and data storage