AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Thin Film Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session TF2+EM-WeA

Paper TF2+EM-WeA4
Self and Directed Assembly of Thin Metallic Films by Pulsed Laser Induced Dewetting

Wednesday, November 2, 2011, 3:00 pm, Room 110

Session: Nanostructuring Thin Films
Presenter: Yueying Wu, University of Tennessee
Authors: Y. Wu, University of Tennessee
J.D. Fowlkes, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
L. Kondic, New Jersey Institute of Technology
J. Diez, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNCPBA), Argentina
N.A. Roberts, University of Tennessee
P.D. Rack, University of Tennessee
Correspondent: Click to Email
The synthesis and assembly of functional metallic nanomaterials is critical for realizing many important applications of nanoscience and nanotechnology, and metallic thin film dewetting has been an effective and low-cost approach to this end. In this study, we investigated dewetting of metal thin films via pulsed nanosecond laser melting. We also explore the dewetting and nanopattern formation of nanolithographically pre-patterned thin films of various shapes to understand initial and boundary conditions in guiding the assembly. More recently, nanolithography was used to impose the perturbation which ultimately led to an organized nanoparticle array. Specifically, liquid–phase pulsed laser induced dewetting (PLiD) was used to transform metallic thin film strips into nanoparticle arrays. We demonstrated that the assembly accuracy and precision could be drastically improved by merely imposing a synthetic sinusoidal perturbation onto the lateral surfaces of the thin film strip. The synthetic perturbations in the strip translated into an unstable varicose oscillation on the rivulet during retraction – a precise nanoparticle diameter and pitch emerged thereby superseding the otherwise naturally evolving modes predicted by the modified Rayleigh-Plateau instability. A nanoscale, synthetic perturbation was usefully imposed to “nudge” the natural, self–assembly dispersion toward significantly higher order.