Growth and patterning of nanostructures through irreversible liquid drying, self-assembly, and crystallization

Abstract

Fast-drying has been developed as a method for the fabrication of large-scale nanopatterns on various solid surfaces from thin solution layers. This method has been applied to the surface patterning of four different materials, ranging from inorganic salts (i.e., NaCl and Zn(NO3)2.6H2O) to organic compounds (i.e., organosilane and anthracene). Emphases were focused on exploring the mechanisms involved in the surface patterning, including heterogeneous epitaxial crystallization, self-epitaxial nucleation (SEN), diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA), and water-adsorption induced morphology transition, self-assembly, fingering instability, repeating slipping-and-sticking motions of the contact line during irreversible drying of thin solution layer. Specifically, the major research projects presented in this thesis include (1) oriented NaCl nanocrystals grown on mica from thin solution layers: morphology transition and self-assembly; (2) interconnected networks of Zn(NO3)2.6(H2O) nanotubes and its solid-phase transformation into porous zinc oxide architectures; (3) macroscopic concentric ring arrays of radially-oriented anthracene wires based on irreversible liquid drying and molecular self-assembly; and (4) macroscopic surface architectures of self-assembled (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) and non-equilibrium crystalline patterns of APTES oligomers.