title: A self-assembling dendritic reactor: versatile formation of characteristic patterns with nanoscale dimension.
abstract: Spherical dendrimers with phenylazomethine backbones are modified onto atomically flat mica or graphite substrates with a simple solvent based spin-coating method, and the resulting surfaces are observed by atomic force microscopy. Especially on the mica substrate, dendrimers form very fine and highly regular patterns with aligned nano-dot arrays and lines. An important observation is that the interval of each dot or line is ≈400 nm whereas previously reported self-assembling patterns exhibit longer intervals than 5 μm. It is revealed that spherical dendrimers with relatively low intermolecular interactions without any terminal modifications are suitable for the fine self-assembling pattern formation. This fact suggests that the regular pattern arises from a physical dissipative structure formation due to a fingering instability induced by Marangoni convection but not by anisotropic intermolecular interactions.
authors: Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, 226-8503, Japan.
authors: Takane
authors: T
authors: Imaoka
authors: Noriko
authors: N
authors: Bukeo
authors: Kimihisa
authors: K
authors: Yamamoto
mesh_terms: D050091:Dendrimers / Q000737:chemistry; D006108:Graphite / Q000737:chemistry; D018625:Microscopy, Atomic Force; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D050091:Dendrimers; D006108:Graphite
keywords: dendrimers; nanoscale; patterning; reactors; self-assembly