Hi there,
I met with a problem in transferring a self assembled nanoparticle monolayer onto a hydrophobic film. First, I made the monolayer film at liquid-air interface. But the transferring process is tough. If I use water for as the subphase, it will be repulsed out of the substrate immediately, leaving nothing on the substrate. If I use ethanol, ethanol itself will just stay on the substrate. Thus the drying process will make the monolayer crack a lot. Do you guys have any idea what other method I can try to transfer the film?
Hi
I do not understand you completely but in tow way you use hydrophobic liquid, I think you have to and must use an amphipathic liquid to solving your problem.
Amphipathic agent can attach both, hydrophobic or hydrophilic.
This process of which you ascing a question is performed on the Langmuir- Blodget device.
Hi
Once your particles have been stabilised at the air liquid interface it will take a lot of energy to re disperse them into the aqueous phase, which means they are extremely stable. At this point you should be able to add an immiscible oil phase with low vapour pressure into the system and slowly take away the water until the particles layer is transformed onto the oil-air interface. I think you should be able to get away with it because I'm guessing your particles are covered probably by a bulky organic species which would make them happy to reside in oil.
Hi Lingju,
The following paper may help with solving the problem you mentioned
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0957-4484/27/22/225604/meta
This paper is useful for wafer scale crack-free deposition of nanoparticle single layer. If your substrate is small (say < 1cm^2), you can try to modify the wafer surface by using O2 plasma treatment to turn the surface from being hydrophobic to hydrophilic. An alternative way, if your wafer is robust to acid, you can open up a 70% nitric acid bottle and place your wafer on top of the bottle port for a couple of minutes. The HNO3 vapor in this way can turn your wafer surface into a hydrophilic one.
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