posted on 2018-04-19, 00:00authored byMojun Chen, Zhaoyi Xu, Jung Hyun Kim, Seung Kwon Seol, Ji Tae Kim
Exploiting a femtoliter liquid meniscus
formed on a nanopipet is
a powerful approach to spatially control mass transfer or chemical
reaction at the nanoscale. However, the insufficient reliability of
techniques for the meniscus formation still restricts its practical
use. We report on a noncontact, programmable method to produce a femtoliter
liquid meniscus that is utilized for parallel three-dimensional (3D)
nanoprinting. The method based on electrohydrodynamic dispensing enables
one to create an ink meniscus at a pipet–substrate gap without
physical contact and positional feedback. By guiding the meniscus
under rapid evaporation of solvent in air, we successfully fabricate
freestanding polymer 3D nanostructures. After a quantitative characterization
of the experimental conditions, we show that we can use a multibarrel
pipet to achieve parallel fabrication process of clustered nanowires
with precise placement. We expect this technique to advance productivity
in nanoscale 3D printing.