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A Technique to Functionalize and Self-assemble Macroscopic Nanoparticle-ligand Monolayer Films onto Template-free Substrates

This protocol describes a self-assembly technique to create macroscopic monolayer films composed of ligand-coated nanoparticles1,2. The simple, robust and ...

Naval Research Laboratory

We study numerically and experimentally the dynamics and control of viscous fingering patterns in a circular Hele-Shaw cell. The nonlocality and nonlinearity of the system, especially interactions among developing fingers, make the emergent pattern difficult to predict and control. By controlling the injection rate of the less viscous fluid, we can precisely suppress the evolving interfacial instabilities. There exist denumerable attractive, self-similarly evolving symmetric, universal shapes. Experiments confirm the feasibility of the control strategy, which is summarized in a morphology diagram.

Control of viscous fingering patterns in a radial Hele-Shaw cell.

Reverse micelles (RMs) containing aqueous solutions of Ag(+) ions in their core produce fluorescent Ag species, upon exposure to gamma irradiation. A two-phase liquid system is used for RM formation. The RMs can be employed in novel gamma radiation detectors with appearance of fluorescence indicating that radiation was once present.

Generation of fluorescent silver nanoscale particles in reverse micelles using gamma irradiation.

The assembly of plasmonic nanoparticles with precise spatial and orientational order may lead to structures with new electromagnetic properties at optical frequencies. The directed self-assembly method presented controls the interparticle-spacing and symmetry of the resulting nanometer-sized elements in solution. The self-assembly of three-dimensional (3D), icosahedral plasmonic nanosclusters (NCs) with resonances at visible wavelengths is demonstrated experimentally. The ideal NCs consist of twelve gold (Au) nanospheres (NSs) attached to thiol groups at predefined locations on the surface of a genetically engineered cowpea mosaic virus with icosahedral symmetry. In situ dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements confirm the NSs assembly on the virus. Transmission electron micrographs (TEM) demonstrate the ability of the self-assembly method to control the nanoscopic symmetry of the bound NSs, which reflects the icosahedral symmetry of the virus. Both, TEM and DLS show that the NCs comprise of a distribution of capsids mostly covered (i.e., 6-12 NS/capsid) with NSs. 3D finite-element simulations of aqueous suspensions of NCs reproduce the experimental bulk absorbance measurements and major features of the spectra. Simulations results show that the fully assembled NCs give rise to a 10-fold surface-averaged enhancement of the local electromagnetic field.

Jake Fontana

Naval Research Laboratory

A Technique to Functionalize and Self-assemble Macroscopic Nanoparticle-ligand Monolayer Films onto Template-free Substrates