Studies on the Self-organization of Colloidal Nanoparticles at Interfaces

Various methods of growing highly ordered hexagonal arrays of polystyrene latexspheres on different substrates have been investigated. Series of experiments were performed on each growing method, namely spin-coating, parallel transferring with water evaporation, Langmuir-Blogett deposition and dip coating to study the optimal experimental conditions to let the particles form 2D crystals as well as the effects of different experimental parameters on the self-organization of the particles. Samples were characterized by means of contact angle measurements, optical microscopy, atomic forcemicroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Relatively large areas of highly ordered particle arrays were obtained by means of dip-coating the hydrophilic glass substrate into the dilute colloidal suspension with the help of anionic surfactant SDS. And for the L-Bmethod, the hydrophobic substrate was found to be more favorable than the hydrophilicsubstrate. This thesis presents all the important experiments, results and discussions with an introduction to the basics of the topic at the beginning.