Directed placement of gold nanorods using a removable template for guided assembly.

We have used a temperature sensitive polymer film as a removable template to position, and align, gold nanorods onto an underlying target substrate. Shape-matching guiding structures for the assembly of nanorods of size 80 nm × 25 nm have been written by thermal scanning probe lithography. The nanorods were assembled into the guiding structures, which determine both the position and the orientation of single nanorods, by means of capillary interactions.

Precise placement of gold nanorods by capillary assembly.

Capillary assembly was explored for the precise placement of 25 nm × 70 nm colloidal gold nanorods on prestructured poly(dimethylsiloxane) template surfaces. The concentration of nanorods and cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), the template wettability, and most critically the convective transport of the dispersed nanorods were tuned to study their effect on the resulting assembly yield. It is shown that gold nanorods can be placed into arrayed 120-nm diameter holes, achieving assembly yields as high as 95% when the local concentration of nanorods at the receding contact line is sufficiently high.

Matrix effects on the surface plasmon resonance of dry supported gold nanocrystals.

We present a method to characterize surface-chemical properties of gold nanocrystals. Spherical, 60 nm gold nanocrystals were immobilized on quartz substrates by a coupling agent and cleaned in a hydrogen plasma. The nanocrystals were then functionalized with alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAM) of varying chain lengths by adsorption from the gas phase, and localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) spectroscopy was performed on the samples.