Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies, Institute of Energy Technology, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zürich, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2012 Jun 12;3:890. doi: 10.1038/ncomms1891.
Nanotechnology, with its broad impact on societally relevant applications, relies heavily on the availability of accessible nanofabrication methods. Even though a host of such techniques exists, the flexible, inexpensive, on-demand and scalable fabrication of functional nanostructures remains largely elusive. Here we present a method involving nanoscale electrohydrodynamic ink-jet printing that may significantly contribute in this direction. A combination of nanoscopic placement precision, soft-landing fluid dynamics, rapid solvent vapourization, and subsequent self-assembly of the ink colloidal content leads to the formation of scaffolds with base diameters equal to that of a single ejected nanodroplet. The virtually material-independent growth of nanostructures into the third dimension is then governed by an autofocussing phenomenon caused by local electrostatic field enhancement, resulting in large aspect ratio. We demonstrate the capabilities of our electrohydrodynamic printing technique with several examples, including the fabrication of plasmonic nanoantennas with features sizes down to 50 nm.
纳米技术在与社会相关的应用中具有广泛的影响，严重依赖于可用的纳米制造方法。尽管存在许多这样的技术，但灵活、廉价、按需和可扩展的功能性纳米结构制造仍然难以实现。在这里，我们提出了一种涉及纳米级电动力学喷墨打印的方法，它可能会在这方面做出重大贡献。纳米级放置精度、软着陆流体动力学、快速溶剂蒸发以及随后的胶体墨水的自组装，导致支架的基底直径与单个喷射的纳米液滴相等。通过局部静电场增强引起的自动聚焦现象，纳米结构几乎可以不受材料限制地向第三维度生长，从而形成大纵横比。我们用几个例子展示了我们的电动力学打印技术的能力，包括制造特征尺寸低至 50nm 的等离子体纳米天线。
