title: Magnetic assembly and annealing of colloidal lattices and superlattices.
abstract: The ability to assemble mesoscopic colloidal lattices above a surface is important for fundamental studies related with nucleation and crystallization but also for a variety of technological applications in photonics and microengineering. Current techniques based on particle sedimentation above a lithographic template are limited by a slow deposition process and by the use of static templates, which make difficult to implement fast annealing procedures. Here it is demonstrated a method to realize and anneal a series of colloidal lattices displaying triangular, honeycomb, or kagome-like symmetry above a structure magnetic substrate. By using a binary mixture of particles, superlattices can be realized increasing further the variety and complexity of the colloidal patterns which can be produced.
authors.affiliation: Departament d'Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria and Institut de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia IN2UB, Universitat de Barcelona , Avenida Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tierno