title: Benzyl alcohol and block copolymer micellar lithography: a versatile route to assembling gold and in situ generated titania nanoparticles into uniform binary nanoarrays.
abstract: Simultaneous synthesis and assembly of nanoparticles that exhibit unique physicochemical properties are critically important for designing new functional devices at the macroscopic scale. In the present study, we report a simple version of block copolymer micellar lithography (BCML) to synthesize gold and titanium dioxide (TiO(2)) nanoarrays by using benzyl alcohol (BnOH) as a solvent. In contrast to toluene, BnOH can lead to the formation of various gold nanopatterns via salt-induced micellization of polystyrene-block-poly(vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P2VP). In the case of titania, the use of BCML with a nonaqueous sol-gel method, the "benzyl alcohol route", enables the fabrication of nanopatterns made of quasi-hexagonally organized particles or parallel wires upon aging a (BnOH-TiCl(4)-PS(846)-b-P2VP(171))-containing solution for four weeks to grow TiO(2) building blocks in situ. This approach was found to depend mainly on the relative lengths of the polymer blocks, which allows nanoparticle-induced micellization and self-assembly during solvent evaporation. Moreover, this versatile route enables the design of uniform and quasi-ordered gold-TiO(2) binary nanoarrays with a precise particle density due to the absence of graphoepitaxy during the deposition of TiO(2) onto gold nanopatterns.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Medicine, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, 82152 Martinsried, Germany. polleux@biochem.mpg.de
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Polleux
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rasp
authors.forename: Ilia
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Louban
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Plath
authors.forename: Armin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Feldhoff
authors.forename: Joachim P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Spatz
mesh_terms: D019905:Benzyl Alcohol / Q000737:chemistry*; D002712:Chlorides / Q000737:chemistry; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D017612:Gold Compounds / Q000737:chemistry; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D008823:Micelles; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D011327:Printing; D012997:Solvents / Q000737:chemistry; D014025:Titanium / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D002712:Chlorides; D017612:Gold Compounds; D008823:Micelles; D011108:Polymers; D012997:Solvents; C009495:titanium dioxide; D006046:Gold; C024568:gold tetrachloride, acid; D014025:Titanium; D019905:Benzyl Alcohol