Nanoparticle printing with single-particle resolution

Abstract

Bulk syntheses of colloids efficiently produce nanoparticles with unique and useful properties. Their integration onto surfaces is a prerequisite for exploiting these properties in practice. Ideally, the integration would be compatible with a variety of surfaces and particles, while also enabling the fabrication of large areas and arbitrarily high-accuracy patterns. Whereas printing routinely meets these demands at larger length scales, we have developed a novel printing process that enables positioning of sub-100-nm particles individually with high placement accuracy. A colloidal suspension is inked directly onto printing plates, whose wetting properties and geometry ensure that the nanoparticles only fill predefined topographical features. The dry particle assembly is subsequently printed from the plate onto plain substrates through tailored adhesion. We demonstrate that the process can create a variety of particle arrangements including lines, arrays and bitmaps, while preserving the catalytic and optical activity of the individual nanoparticles.

Additive nanomanufacturing – A review

“…Selfassembly is therefore not available as a standalone fabrication method that can build completely arbitrary assemblies, but it does allow for existing surfaces and objects to be functionalised to perform other useful tasks, 153,158,159,160 including large-scale growth of features like carbon nanotubes for circuits. Patterning areas of a surface for self-assembly, although limited to the resolution of the preceding lithography steps, can even direct the very precise manipulation of nanoparticles individually.…”

“…Patterning areas of a surface for self-assembly, although limited to the resolution of the preceding lithography steps, can even direct the very precise manipulation of nanoparticles individually. For instance, 60 nm gold nanoparticles were shown to be isolated onto a PDMS stamp by drawing a meniscus of gold colloid across the indented surface 160 ( see FIG. 17).…”

Sub-Micrometer Patterning Using Soft Lithography

“…Conversely, it is also possible to position individual nanoparticles on a substrate. As shown in Figure 122.8a, the stamp can serve as a template which allows particles to occupy predefined topographical features during dewetting of the solution [108]. During transfer, the position of each particle is retained with high precision (Figure 122.8b), although pretreatment of the surface (e.g., with a polymer layer) and elevated temperature are necessary to mediate the transfer.…”

Hybrid 3D printing by bridging micro/nano processes

“…Because the bonding mechanism plays a major role in nanoparticle printing [53], understanding on the bonding mechanism is essential to control the printed features. Also it is expected that the bonding force per unit area is stronger in smaller features than larger ones, because the portion of a focal point becomes larger in smaller features.…”