School of Chemistry - Research Publications

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    A General Method for Direct Assembly of Single Nanocrystals
    Zhang, H ; Liu, Y ; Ashokan, A ; Gao, C ; Dong, Y ; Kinnear, C ; Kirkwood, N ; Zaman, S ; Maasoumi, F ; James, TD ; Widmer-Cooper, A ; Roberts, A ; Mulvaney, P (WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH, 2022-07)
    Abstract Controlled nanocrystal assembly is a pre‐requisite for incorporation of these materials into solid state devices. Many assembly methods have been investigated which target precise nanocrystal positioning, high process controllability, scalability, and universality. However, most methods are unable to achieve all of these goals. Here, surface templated electrophoretic deposition (STED) is presented as a potential assembly method for a wide variety of nanocrystals. Controlled positioning and deposition of a wide range of nanocrystals into arbitrary spatial arrangements − including gold nanocrystals of different shapes and sizes, magnetic nanocrystals, fluorescent organic nanoparticles, and semiconductor quantum dots − is demonstrated. Nanoparticles with diameters <10 nm are unable to be deposited due to their low surface charge and strong Brownian motion (low Péclet number). It is shown that this limit can be circumvented by forming clusters of nanocrystals or by silica coating nanocrystals to increase their effective size.
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    Direct Assembly of Vertically Oriented, Gold Nanorod Arrays
    Zhang, H ; Liu, Y ; Shahidan, MFS ; Kinnear, C ; Maasoumi, F ; Cadusch, J ; Akinoglu, EM ; James, TD ; Widmer-Cooper, A ; Roberts, A ; Mulvaney, P (WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH, 2021-02-03)
    Although many nanoscale materials such as quantum dots and metallic nanocrystals exhibit size dependent optical properties, it has been difficult to incorporate them into optical or electronic devices because there are currently no methods for precise, large‐scale deposition of single nanocrystals. Of particular interest is the need to control the orientation of single nanocrystals since the optical properties are usually strongly anisotropic. Here a method based on electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is reported to precisely assemble vertically oriented, single gold nanorods. It is demonstrated that the orientation of gold nanorods during deposition is controlled by the electric dipole moment induced along the rod by the electric field. Dissipative particle dynamics simulations indicate that the magnitude of this dipole moment is dominated by the polarizability of the solution phase electric double layer around the nanorod. The resulting vertical gold nanorod arrays exhibit reflected colors due to selective excitation of the transverse surface plasmon mode. The EPD method allows assembly of arrays with a density of over one million, visually resolvable, vertical nanorods per square millimeter.