Directed Self-assembly of Colloidal Particles Using External Fields

Download or read book Directed Self-assembly of Colloidal Particles Using External Fields written by Manish Mittal and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thesis we demonstrate the use of external fields to direct the self assembly of anisotropic particles into controlled microstructure. Directed self-assembly by external electric field has the advantage that it leads to rapid assembly of particles, it is reversible and the interactions can be tuned by controlling the field parameters. However, the polarization mechanism of colloidal particles and its dependence on the properties of the particle and the medium is not well understood. We use optical tweezers to measure the interactions between particles as a function of medium salt concentration and field frequency. We identify the double layer relaxation as the dominant polarization mechanism. This enables us to reinterpret the order-disorder phase diagram, published earlier by Lumsdon and co-workers, and thus predict the electric field required to assemble particles given the size of the particles, the frequency of the field and the type and concentration of the counter-ion in the system. We study the application of external field to anisotropic nanoparticle assembly using zeolite particles. The assembly of disk-shaped zeolite particles is interesting from the perspective of both understanding how anisotropic particles respond in electric field and also to self-assemble a zeolite structure, a material with large number of industrial applications. Similar to spherical particles, the disk shaped particles also form a hexagonal close-packed structure by assembling in a side-to-side fashion with their long axis, the diameter, oriented along the field direction. However, due to the smaller size of particles the field strengths required to assemble these particles are higher than those used in interaction measurements. At high field strengths the particles also form a brush-like structure that grows from the electrode interface towards the bulk suspension. The assembly of particles near the electrode interface occurs due to an interplay between dipolar force and the drag force due to electro-hydrodynamic (EH) flow. In addition to generalizing the dipolar interaction mechanism to anisotropic particles, this work also demonstrates the challenges associated with the use of only electric field to self-assemble particles into a permanent structure. To form an irreversible structure under electric field we develop a combined field and flow directed technique for assembling anisotropic particles and show its application using ellipsoidal titanium dioxide nanoparticles. The colloidal suspension of titanium dioxide particles, confined between glass substrates, is allowed to dry in the presence of electric field. The electric field orients the particles and due to the evaporation of solvent micrometer thick particulate films deposit onto the glass substrate. The microstructure of the film is controlled by tuning the field strength and the field frequency. On varying the field frequency the particles undergo a parallel-random-perpendicular orientation transition with respect to the electric field direction. The optical and the mechanical properties of the film are dependent on the orientation of the deposited particles. This work demonstrates a novel method of assembling anisotropic particles using external fields and controlling the microstructure using field frequency. Although field-assisted convective deposition allows us to control the orientation of the particles, the thickness of the film cannot be precisely controlled and the electrode gap limits the area of the assembled region. Unlike external electric fields, flow fields are more scalable and could be used to deposit particles over a large area. We use a flow coating technique to deposit ellipsoidal titanium dioxide particles on a glass substrate. The film is deposited from a colloidal suspension confined between a fixed blade and a translating substrate. Both the microstructure and the thickness of the film are simultaneously controlled by varying the particle volume fraction in the suspension, the velocity of the substrate and the angle between the blade and the substrate. At volume fractions above the isotropic-nematic transition the particles in the film orient along the coating direction. At volume fractions below the isotropic-nematic transition the particles do not orient along the coating direction. The substrate velocity and the blade angle affect the shear and extensional stresses exerted on the colloidal particles, which determine the orientation of the particles in the deposited film. Thus, flow coating is a rapid and scalable approach for de- positing thin films of nanostructured material consisting of anisotropic particles. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).