11.07.2015 Views

Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Figure 11 High-resolution SEM image of gold nanocrystals deposited from adispersion of 10% ethanol and 90% hexane <strong>by</strong> volume (A) without and (B) withsonication. Without sonication, the superlattices exhibit rough films with significantareas of dendritic growth and some areas of homogeneous aggregation. Sonicationprovides the energy necessary to induce homogeneous nucleation resulting in nanocrystalsuperlattice crystallites that settle onto the substrate.structures including spheres, ellipsoids, tetrahedron, truncated octahedron,decahedron, and icosahedron that affect packing geometry [32,52,53].C. Solvent Effects During Nanocrystal Depositionand Thin-Film FormationOn a macroscopic scale, solvent evaporation can lead to convective instabilitiesand substrate dewetting phenomena that affect nanocrystal filmformation [54–56]. On a local microscopic scale, the nanocrystals organizeinto close-packed superlattices according to the guidelines discussed earlier.However, very interesting macroscopic patterning can occur, particularlywhen depositing nanocrystals <strong>by</strong> evaporation of a volatile solvent.An evaporating drop of a concentrated nanocrystal dispersion exhibitsvarious flow patterns due to the temperature gradient that occurs between thecenter of the droplet and the outer droplet edge [57,58]. Solvent evaporatesfaster at the edge of the droplet due to the boundary conditions above thedroplet and the evaporative flux, for example, can be expressed as J(r) = J 0 (1r/R) 2 , where k = (p 2h c )/(2p 2h c ). In fact, the flux diverges at the edge ofthe droplet, leading to a significant mass, thermal, and surface tension gradientsbetween the center of the drop and the outer rim. These gradients, inturn, pull the nanocrystals to the edge of the droplet. The evaporating dropletsgenerally exhibit a stick–slip motion during evaporation, where they becomepinned for a short time as nanocrystals accumulate at the droplet edge and<strong>Copyright</strong> <strong>2004</strong> <strong>by</strong> <strong>Marcel</strong> <strong>Dekker</strong>, <strong>Inc</strong>. <strong>All</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> <strong>Reserved</strong>.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!