Directed Placement of Gold Nanorods Using a Removable Template for Guided Assembly

• Published in: Nano letters Vol. 11; no. 9; pp. 3957 - 3962
• Main Authors: Holzner, Felix, Kuemin, Cyrill, Paul, Philip, Hedrick, James L, Wolf, Heiko, Spencer, Nicholas D, Duerig, Urs, Knoll, Armin W
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Chemical Society 14.09.2011
• Subjects: Assembly; Chemical synthesis methods; Cleaning; Condensed matter: structure, mechanical and thermal properties; Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science; rheology; Exact sciences and technology; Gold; Gold - chemistry; Lithography; Macromolecular Substances - chemistry; Materials science; Materials Testing; Metal Nanoparticles - chemistry; Methods of nanofabrication; Nanocrystalline materials; Nanorods; Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization; Nanoscale materials: clusters, nanoparticles, nanotubes, and nanocrystals; Nanostructure; Nanotechnology - methods; Nanotubes; Nanotubes - chemistry; Orientation; Particle Size; Physics; Placement; Polymers - chemistry; Scanning; Structure of solids and liquids; crystallography; Surface Properties; Temperature; Scanning probe lithography, nanopatterning, gold nanorods, directed assembly, capillary assembly; Gold; Thermal decomposition; Lithography; Template reaction; Polymer films; Polymers; Nanorod; Nanostructured materials; Crystal structure
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/nl202276q

We have used a temperature sensitive polymer film as a removable template to position, and align, gold nanorods onto an underlying target substrate. Shape-matching guiding structures for the assembly of nanorods of size 80 nm × 25 nm have been written by thermal scanning probe lithography. The nanorods were assembled into the guiding structures, which determine both the position and the orientation of single nanorods, by means of capillary interactions. Following particle assembly, the polymer was removed cleanly by thermal decomposition and the nanorods are transferred to the underlying substrate. We have thus demonstrated both the placement and orientation of nanorods with an overall positioning accuracy of ≈10 nm onto an unstructured target substrate.