Prof. Hagay Shpaisman
Chemistry Department & Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
While numerous chemical procedures have been developed to produce microstructures, achieving on-demand patterns remains challenging. Current micro-fabrication methods typically involve multiple steps and necessitate an initial template for self-organization. However, directed assembly, achieved by applying external fields to materials, can induce a state of local equilibrium with complex spatial organization.
We present a novel concept based on the idea that mechanical forces arising from standing acoustic waves or flow directed by local laser heating can be utilized to direct not only preformed nanoparticles but also products of ongoing chemical reactions. These forces determine the spatial distribution of the formed materials, their mesoscopic structure, amorphousness/crystallinity ratio, the kinetics of the reaction, and could facilitate various composite formations. A key feature of this approach is its modularity, as it could be implemented across various material systems.