Site-specific colloidal crystal nucleation by template-enhanced particle transport.

ABSTRACT: The monomer surface mobility is the single most important parameter that decides the nucleation density and morphology of islands during thin-film growth. During template-assisted surface growth in particular, low surface mobilities can prevent monomers from reaching target sites and this results in a partial to complete loss of nucleation control. Whereas in atomic systems a broad range of surface mobilities can be readily accessed, for colloids, owing to their large size, this window is substantially narrow and therefore imposes severe restrictions in extending template-assisted growth techniques to steer their self-assembly. Here, we circumvented this fundamental limitation by designing templates with spatially varying feature sizes, in this case moiré patterns, which in the presence of

SUBMITTER: Mishra CK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5087070 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature