On June 12th, Beijing time, Science Daily reported that the era of hours spent forming films on the surface of microscope-visible wafers is over. The US Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) A technique was modified to enable self-assembled nanoparticle arrays to form highly ordered films within a minute of visible distance. Ting Xu, a polymer scientist at the Materials Science Department of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led the study to combine block copolymer-based supramolecular molecules with gold nanoparticles to create a nanocomposite material. After the solvent annealing process, it will quickly self-assemble and form a hierarchical structural film, reaching a square centimeter across the area. This technology is compatible with current nanofabrication processes and has the potential to generate a new series of optical coatings for a wide range of applications including solar energy, nanoelectronics, and computer memory. This technology can even open new doors for the manufacture of metamaterials and nanoconstructs with extraordinary optical properties. "Our technology can rapidly produce incredible nanoparticle assembly in areas as large as silicon," said Xu, who also serves on the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the School of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. “You can think of it as a pancake batter, spread out on a pan, and you can enjoy freshly baked pancakes in a minute.†Nanoparticles are like artificial atoms with unique optical, electronic, and mechanical properties. If the nanoparticle can be induced to self-assemble to form a complex structure and hierarchical pattern, similar to the structure of a protein, it will achieve mass production of equipment that is a thousand times smaller than that used by modern microtechnology. Xu and her research team are steadily moving toward this ultimate goal. Their recent research focuses on the use of supramolecular solvents based on block copolymers to guide self-assembly of nanoparticle arrays. Supramolecules are groups of molecules that perform a particular set of functions as a single molecule. Block copolymers are very long sequences, or a unit structure tethered to another type of unit structure, which has the inherent ability to self-assemble into well-defined, nano-sized arrays of structures within a visible distance of the naked eye. "Supramolecules based on block copolymers can self-assemble and form a wide range of morphologies with microdomain features, typically a few nanometers to tens of nanometers," Xu said. "Given that their size can be compared with nanoparticles, supramolecular microdomains provide an ideal structural framework for the self-assembly of nanoparticle arrays." In the supramolecular technique modified by Xu and colleagues, the gold nanoparticle array became part of the supramolecular solvent to form a thin film approximately 200 nanometers thick. By solvent annealing and using *** as a solvent, the nanoparticle array can form three-dimensional cylindrical microdomains, which are inserted into a twisted hexagonal lattice parallel to the surface. The display of hierarchical hierarchical structure control of nanoparticle self-assembly is impressive, but it is also only part of this latest technology. "In order to be compatible with the nano-processing process, the self-assembling manufacturing process must be completed in a few minutes to minimize the degradation of the nanoparticle characteristics caused by exposure to the processing environment," said Xu. She and her team have systematically analyzed the thermodynamics and kinetics of self-assembly of supramolecular nanocomposite films exposed to solvent vapors. They found that by optimizing the individual parameters, ie the amount of solvent, the assembly kinetics can be precisely adjusted to achieve a layered structure of the film within 1 minute. "In order to build block copolymer-based supramolecules using small molecules that are not covalently linked to polymer side chains, we have changed the energy panorama to make the solvent content the most important factor," said Xu. "This allows us to use a small amount of solvent to achieve rapid sequencing of nanoparticle arrays." The optical properties of nanocomposite films are dependent on the characteristics of the individual nanoparticles and the well-defined inter-nanoparticle distances in different directions. Taking into account that the dimensions of gold nanoparticles are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the wavelength of visible light, the supramolecular technology developed by Xu and colleagues has great potential for the fabrication of metamaterials. These man-made materials have received great attention in recent years because their electromagnetic properties are difficult to achieve with natural materials. For example, a metamaterial may have a negative refractive index, that is, it can bend light backwards, which is different from a natural material that can only bend light forward. "Our gold nanocomposite films exhibit strong wavelength-dependent optical anisotropy, which can be achieved by changing different solvents," Xu said. “This provides a viable alternative to lithography for making metamaterials.†Although Xu and colleagues used gold nanoparticles in their films, this supramolecular approach is compatible with nanoparticles of other chemical components. "Utilizing technologies that are compatible with modern, widely used nanofabrication processes, including blade coating, ink jet printing, and dynamic zone annealing, we should be able to create a nanoparticle assembly library with light manipulation and other properties." Xu said . The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. Other authors of this article include Joseph Kao, Kari Thorkelsson, Peter Bai, Zhen Zhang, and Cheng Sun. .
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