Reprinted (adapted) with permission from ACS Nano 14, 15216 (2020). Copyright 2020 American Chemical Society
Scientists at Japan’s Nagoya University and the National Institute for Materials Science have found that a simple one-drop approach is cheaper and faster for tiling functional nanosheets together in a single layer. If the process, described in the journal
ACS Nano, can be scaled up, it could advance development of next-generation oxide electronics.
“Drop casting is one of the most versatile and cost-effective methods for depositing nanomaterials on a solid surface,” says Nagoya University materials scientist Minoru Osada, the study’s corresponding author. “But it has serious drawbacks, one being the so-called coffee-ring effect: a pattern left by particles once the liquid they are in evaporates. We found, to our great surprise, that controlled convection by a pipette and a hotplate causes uniform deposition rather than the ring-like pattern, suggesting a new pos