Bridging the gap between two revolutionary technologies through the combination of combinatorial libraries and soft lithography yields the creation of a nano soft-material screening platform. Dual spray coating technique is performed to create both size and compositional gradients across polymer pen lithography (PPL) arrays in a continuous format utilizing small linear window at the edge of the spray deposition area. Through evaporative self-assembly, this macro scale process creates a micro scale continuous gradient between each polymer pen tips across the array through diffusion and then drying onto the base and walls of the pyramidal tip, which then prints nano scale features. Nano combinatorial libraries of gold palladium bimetallic nanoparticles are created through scanning probe block copolymer lithography (SPBCL) using a dual spray deposition onto PPL array. SPBCL is a technique by which patterned polymer domes act as nanoreactors for the site-specific synthesis of a single nanoparticle. Each nanoparticle has a well-defined size and composition, which is directly correlated to the ink on the pen that can be finely tuned to produce nanoparticles from 2 nm to 50 nm in size. Demonstrating a platform for creating complex nano arrays with an elegant simplicity for nano combinatorial screening. Characterization of size gradients was performed atomic force microscopy demonstrating a size increase, and compositional gradients with fluorescent intensity for fluorophores and x-ray fluorescence for bimetallic nanoparticle composition demonstrating a composition gradient from 10% to 90% between the two species.

Combinatorial libraries of alloy nanoparticles individually synthesized through scanning probe spray gradients

251st National Meeting (2016)

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