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Tailoring the optical and electronic properties of nanostructured polymer-metal composites demonstrates great potential for efficient fabrication of modern organic optical and electronic devices such as flexible sensors, transistors, diodes, or photovoltaics. Self-assembled polymer-metal nanocomposites offer an excellent perspective for creating hierarchical nanostructures on macroscopic scales by simple bottom-up processes. We investigate the growth processes of nanogranular silver (Ag) layers on diblock copolymer thin film templates during sputter deposition. The Ag growth is strongly driven by self-assembly and selective wetting on the lamella structure of polystyrene

The progress of organic electronics demands an increased participation of nanotechnology, and it has already been shown that the presence of metallic nanoparticles and/or nanostructured thin films can enhance the device performance. Nevertheless, to gain control over the device final performance, it is crucial to achieve a profound understanding of the nanostructure development and assembly. We investigate the growth kinetics of silver (Ag) on a tris(8-hydroxyquinolinato)aluminum (Alq3) thin film via sputter deposition. The increase of the average electron density of the Ag nanostructured film is observed to follow a sigmoidal shape development as a function of the deposited Ag thickness, as a consequence of dominant island-mediated growth. The nanoclustered film is percolated at around a thickness of 5.0 ± 0.1 nm. At this film thickness the effective film density is about 50%. Moreover, our simulation results indicate that the shape of the nanoclusters changes from truncated spheres to cylinders upon sur...

In this work, formation of self-organized Si nanostructures induced by pure Fe incorporation during normal incidence low-energy (1keV) Ar $$^+$$ ion bombardment is presented. It has been observed that the incorporation of Fe affects the evolution of the surface topography. The addition of Fe generates pronounced nanopatterns, such as dots, ripples and combinations of dots and ripples. The orientation of the ripple wave vector of the patterns formed is found to be in a direction normal to the Fe flow. The nanoripples with wavelength of the order of 39 nm produced is expected to be the lowest wavelength of the patterns reported on ion-beam-eroded structures under the incorporation of metallic impurities as per our knowledge. From the AFM and GISAXS analysis, it has been confirmed that the ripples formed are asymmetric in nature. The effect of the concentration of the Fe on morphological transition of the patterns has been studied using Rutherford backscattering measurements.

Long-range ordered nanostructures are prepared in the poly(styrene)-block-poly(E >-caprolactone) diblock copolymer thin films using micromolding. We evaluated the change in crystallinity based on grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction and proved that the crystallinity increased with the decrease of the mold size. This means that ordered nanostructures with atomic length scale order can be adjusted by tuning the mesoscale confinement. The inherent mechanism was the cooperation of geometric confinement, microphase structure and surface-induced ordering of PS-b-PCL in the melt, which paved the way for the subsequent crystal growth. These findings establish a route to promote the cost-effective nanofabrication by combining the mature microfabrication technique with the emerging directed self-assembly of block copolymers.

A detailed mechanism of the nanoripple pattern formation on Si substrates generated by the simultaneous incorporation of pure Fe impurities at low energy (1 keV) ion beam erosion has been studied. To understand and clarify the mechanism of the pattern formation, a comparative analysis of the samples prepared for various ion fluence values using two complimentary methods for nanostructure analysis, atomic force microscopy, and grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering has been done. We observed that phase separation of the metal silicide formed during the erosion does not precede the ripple formation. It rather concurrently develops along with the ripple structure. Our work is able to differentiate among various models existing in the literature and provides an insight into the mechanism of pattern formation under ion beam erosion with impurity incorporation.

The fabrication of substrates for Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) applications matching the needs for high sensitive and reproducible sensors remains a major scientific and technological issue. We correlate the morphological parameters of silver (Ag) nanostructured thin films prepared by sputter deposition on flat silicon (Si) substrates with their SERS activity. A maximum enhancement of the SERS signal has been found at the Ag percolation threshold, leading to the detection of thiophenol, a non-resonant Raman probe, at concentrations as low as 10-10M, which corresponds to enhancement factors higher than 7 orders of magnitude. To gain full control over the developed nanostructure, we employed the combination of in-situ time-resolved microfocus Grazing Incidence Small Angle X-ray Scattering with sputter deposition. This enables to achieve a deepened understanding of the different growth regimes of Ag. Thereby an improved tailoring of the thin film nanostructure for SERS applications can be realized. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.