Organized metallic nanostructures via polymer self-assembly

International audience; The 'bottom-up' nanofabrication of hybrid materials via self-assembly appears as an interesting way to obtain organized metallic nanoparticles (MNPs). The wide usage of these MNPs as a plasmonic materials in many applications including electronics, photonics, catalysis, biological imaging, drug delivery, sensors and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)illustrate the light on the need to use a simple, easy and cheap method of fabrication taking into consideration the influence of physicochemical parameters on the dimensional characteristics of the hybrid nanostructures. A new approach for surface nanostructuring was innovated by means of metallic nanoparticles organized in a thin homopolymer film (PMMA) on a silicon substrate. The originality of this simple self-assembling is that structuring was fabricated in one step, in addition that no reducing agent was used nor preliminary functionalization of the surface was done. The mixture containing PMMA, metallic salt and solvents was deposited on the semi conductive substrate by using spin coating. After the complete evaporation of solvents, a film of polymer drilled by metallic nanoparticle (MNP) rings was obtained. A wide range of Metallic salts “Mn+ (NO3-)n (M: Ag, Au, Mn, Mg, Cr, Cu, Ni, Eu, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Tb, Dy, Tm, Ca, Zr, Fe, Co, Zn, Al,…) were introduced to the PMMA film using the same method. The key parameters of this new method were defined and the mechanism of this synthesis which takes place on the substrate surface was explained by studying the influence of various physicochemical parameters (solvents, speed of evaporation, and nature of surface) on the organization of the MNPs.