Control of Droplet Size in Liquid Nanodispensing

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2006 papers

Abstract

In this Letter, the phenomena and parameters governing the nanoscale dispensing of liquid through an apertured atomic force microscope probe milled by focused ion beam lithography are characterized in detail. We show that the size of deposited droplets can be reproducibly defined by controlling the aperture size on the probe and the surface energies of both tip outer wall and substrate surface. On the basis of these findings, tips with aperture diameter as small as 35 nm enabled the deposition of regular arrays of nanodroplets with diameter down to 70 nm on an alkylamine-modified surface. The fine control of droplet volumes down to a few tens of zeptoliters (10(-21)L) provides a unique tool for creating devices and probing the fundamentals of wetting at the nanometer scale.

Related Papers

• → Nanostructures Increase Water Droplet Adhesion on Hierarchically Rough Superhydrophobic Surfaces(2012)124 cited
• → Fabrication of metallic contacts to nanometre-sized materials using a focused ion beam (FIB)(2005)59 cited
• → Nanoscale Chemical Patterns Fabricated by Using Colloidal Lithography and Self-Assembled Monolayers(2004)45 cited
• → Using the FIB to characterize nanoparticle materials(2004)16 cited
• → Nanopores for the study of single biomolecules(2008)