Nanomaterials as building blocks offer a promising route for material preparation. And to this purpose, controllable assembly of nanomaterials toward is of great significance. However, the mechanism of the assembling process is still unclear and direct observation of the assembling is difficult for nanomaterials with small size. And therefore, colloidal sub-micro spheres with suitable size will be an ideal platform to study the assembling process and finally control the structures.Herein, the assembly of colloidal monodisperse polystyrene microspheres under alternative current electric field was applied as a model system. The microspheres of about 1-2 �m in diameter enable us to directly observe the process with common optical microscopes. And the conditions, such as voltage and frequency of the electric field, surface charge of the spheres, solvents and salt concentration, were adjusted to obtain different microstructures of the assembly like chain, island and flower. Preliminary results indicates that surface states of the colloidal spheres plays a key role in the final structures while low dielectric constants of the solvents and high salt concentration only caused agglomeration of the microspheres. This work will bring new insight into the assembling process of the nanomaterials as well as understanding the mechanism controlling the microstructures of the assembly.

Directed assembly of colloidal monodisperse polystyrene microspheres induced by alternative current electric field

248th National Meeting (2014)

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