Evaporation induced self assembly is an established method for producing hexagonally close-packed two-dimensional crystals of spheres on hydrophilic surfaces such as glass. Gold or silver deposited over such sphere masks generates a film-over-nanospheres or a nanoprism array. These are used as sensing surfaces in localized surface plasmon extinction and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy experiments. To facilitate the extension of such experiments to the infrared, it is useful to deposit sphere masks on surfaces corresponding to commonly used infrared window materials. These have varying hydrophobicities. It is challenging to find solvents with wetting and evaporation characteristics that are simultaneously appropriate for sphere packing on more hydrophobic surfaces under atmospheric conditions. The design and characterization of an apparatus that decouples evaporation from wetting via the manipulation of headspace solvent vapor pressures will be presented.

Evaporative packing of nano and microsphere masks on hydrophobic surfaces

240th National Meeting (2010)

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