Stop Coloring Inside The Lines- Meniscus-Guided Printing of Nanoparticle Films

Meniscus-guided printing has become a well-known technique for the application of polymer films. The ability to control orientation and thickness along with the ease of scaling have made it a low cost and effective process that is even used in manufacturing OLED displays. This research investigates the use of meniscus-guided printing for the simultaneous self-assembly and deposition of anisotropic gold nanorods. Through varying the speed, concentration of nanorods, energy of surface interactions, and size of substrate we have achieved deposition of several patterns with features from the millimeter to the nanoscale. This method can alleviate the necessity of costly and time-consuming templating or lithography steps, instead by controlling the confinement of the solution, and its interaction with the substrate, nanoparticle films can be templated and printed simultaneously.