Assembly of Nanowires by Contact Line Deposition

摘要

The post-synthetic assembly of nanowires into desired configurations presents a unique challenge. Through the use of a microscope we observed the behaviors of different nanowires during the drying of their DI water based solutions. In addition, we also viewed the resulting dried patterns on substrates by AFM and SEM. We found that nanowires are deposited and aligned along the contact line. The evaporation-induced capillary flow carries the nanowires to the contact line and their alignment there is due to self-assembly directed by solvent evaporation. Based on our observations, we developed a deposition method at the contact line and successfully assembled aligned nanowires in proper patterns on substrates.