Thöle Florian, Xue Longjian, HEß Claudia, Hillebrand Reinald, Gorb Stanislav N, Steinhart Martin
Institut für Chemie neuer Materialien der Universität Osnabrück, Barbarastr. 7, 49069, Osnabrück, Germany.
School of Power and Mechanical Engineering, Wuhan University, South Donghu Road 8, Wuhan, Wuchang, 430072, Hubei, China.
J Microsc. 2017 Feb;265(2):222-231. doi: 10.1111/jmi.12491. Epub 2016 Oct 13.
Arrays of aligned nanorods oriented perpendicular to a support, which are accessible by top-down lithography or by means of shape-defining hard templates, have received increasing interest as sensor components, components for nanophotonics and nanoelectronics, substrates for tissue engineering, surfaces having specific adhesive or antiadhesive properties and as surfaces with customized wettability. Agglomeration of the nanorods deteriorates the performance of components based on nanorod arrays. A comprehensive body of literature deals with mechanical failure mechanisms of nanorods and design criteria for mechanically stable nanorod arrays. However, the structural integrity of nanorod arrays is commonly evaluated only visually and qualitatively. We use real-space analysis of microscopic images to quantify the fraction of condensed nanorods in nanorod arrays. We suggest the number of array elements apparent in the micrographs divided by the number of array elements a defect-free array would contain in the same area, referred to as integrity fraction, as a measure of structural array integrity. Reproducible procedures to determine the imaged number of array elements are introduced. Thus, quantitative comparisons of different nanorod arrays, or of one nanorod array at different stages of its use, are possible. Structural integrities of identical nanorod arrays differing only in the length of the nanorods are exemplarily analysed.
垂直于支撑体排列的纳米棒阵列可通过自上而下的光刻技术或借助形状定义硬模板来制备，作为传感器组件、纳米光子学和纳米电子学组件、组织工程基材、具有特定粘附或抗粘附特性的表面以及具有定制润湿性的表面，受到了越来越多的关注。纳米棒的团聚降低了基于纳米棒阵列的组件的性能。大量文献涉及纳米棒的机械失效机制以及机械稳定的纳米棒阵列的设计标准。然而，纳米棒阵列的结构完整性通常仅通过视觉和定性评估。我们使用微观图像的实空间分析来量化纳米棒阵列中凝聚纳米棒的比例。我们建议将显微照片中明显的阵列元素数量除以无缺陷阵列在同一区域中应包含的阵列元素数量，称为完整性分数，作为结构阵列完整性的一种度量。引入了确定成像阵列元素数量的可重复程序。因此，可以对不同的纳米棒阵列或同一纳米棒阵列在其使用的不同阶段进行定量比较。示例性地分析了仅纳米棒长度不同的相同纳米棒阵列的结构完整性。
