Polyelemental nanoparticles have applications in catalysis, plasmonics, light-harvesting, medical diagnostics and therapeutics, and electronics. Discovering the best nanoparticle architectures for a given application is, however, a daunting task, due to the enormous size of the nanomaterial parameter space and the lack of universal synthesis methods on the nanoscale. Cantilever-free scanning probe lithography (CF-SPL) in combination with block copolymer-based nanoparticle synthesis, a process termed scanning probe block co-polymer lithography (SPBCL), addresses many of these challenges. When SPBCL is integrated with polymer pen lithography (PPL), a way to deposit millions of discrete attoliter-volume nanoreactors loaded with metal precursors on a substrate in parallel is achieved, and each nanoreactor can be transformed into millions of spatially encoded functional nanoparticles. The composition and size of the nanoparticles can be precisely controlled by adjusting the type, ratio, and concentration of metal precursors loaded prior to printing. SPBCL has already been generalized to synthesize nanoparticles composed of metals, metal oxides, and semiconductors, and nanoparticles with up to seven elements and four phases have been successfully demonstrated. Not only has this strategy become extremely powerful for synthesizing densely packed arrays of complex and highly uniform nanoparticles, but more importantly, it has unlocked the possibility of rapidly creating libraries of millions of unique, spatially encoded nanoparticles with gradients of deliberately varied sizes and compositions. This combinatorial method of synthesizing nanoparticle “megalibraries” offers researchers a platform for identifying structures with desired physicochemical properties at a rate that was previously impossible to realize.

Massively-parallel tip-directed synthesis of complex polyelemental nanoparticle arrays

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.