Large-area self assembled monolayers of silica microspheres.pdfVIP

Materials Science-Poland , Vol. 28, No. 2, 2010 Large-area self assembled monolayers of silica microspheres formed by dip coating 1,2* 1 1 3 1 1,3 Y. WANG , L. CHEN , H. YANG , Q. GUO , W. ZHOU , M. TAO 1Department of Electrical Engineering, NanoFAB Center, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019-0072, USA 2Department of Chemistry and Biology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Zhongshan Institute, Zhongshan 528402, China 3ZT Solar, Inc., 1120 South Freeway, Fort Worth, TX 76104, USA Formation by dip coating of highly ordered and closely packed, self assembled monolayers (SAMs) of microsized silica spheres has been reported. Under optimized coating conditions, SAMs were formed with 2 μm diameter silica spheres on record-breakingly large areas, measuring 3×10 mm2 on silicon sub- strates and 1.5×11 mm2 on glass substrates. The SAMs structure and their spatial extension were signifi- cantly influenced by the concentration of the solution, withdrawal speed, immersion time, relative humid- ity, types of solvent and substrate material. The SAMs of silica microspheres provide a glimpse into the wide range of photonic applications for dip coating such as surface texturing and anti-reflection coatings. Keywords: self assembled monolayer; silica microsphere; dip coating 1. Introduction Solution prepared omnidirectional antireflection (omni-AR) coatings were re- cently investigated both experimentally and theoretically, in order to improve the cou- pling of sunlight into solar cells [1, 2]. The basic structure of the omni-AR coating comprises an array of hemispherical microparticles of an optica