Planned nanostructures of colloidal gold via self-assembly on hierarchically assembled organic bilayer template patterns with in-situ generated terminal amino functionality

We demonstrate a hierarchical self-assembly approach to the fabrication of planned nanostructures of colloidal gold particles on silicon, comprising the initial assembly of a molecular template pattern with terminal amino functionality, which then guides the surface assembly and site specific anchoring of gold nanoparticles from a colloidal solution. Well defined amino-terminated templates are obtained via a chemical functionalization process whereby highly ordered bilayer nanopatterns produced by constructive nanolithography (Maoz, R.; Frydman, E.; Cohen, S. R.; Sagiv, J. Adv. Mater. 2000, 12, 725-731) are in-situ modified to generate the top amine functions. This novel approach offers promising performance in terms of the precision, reproducibility, and structural robustness needed for the advancement of a reliable bottom-up nanofabrication methodology.