Forming Nanoparticle Monolayers at Liquid-Air Interfaces by Using Miscible Liquids

One standard way of forming monolayers (MLs) of nanoparticles (NPs) is to drop-cast a NP dispersion made using one solvent onto a second, immiscible solvent; after this upper solvent evaporates, the NP ML can be transferred to a solid substrate by liftoff. We show that this previously universal use of only immiscible solvent pairs can be relaxed and close-packed, hexagonally ordered NP monolayers can self-assemble at liquid-air interfaces when some miscible solvent pairs are used instead. We demonstrate this by drop-casting an iron oxide NP dispersion in toluene on a dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) liquid substrate. The NPs are energetically stable at the DMSO surface and remain there even with solvent mixing. Excess NPs coagulate and precipitate in the DMSO, and this limits NPs at the surface to approximately 1 ML. The ML domains at the surface nucleate independently, which is in contrast to ML growth at the receding edge of the drying drop, as is common in immiscible solvent pair systems and seen here for the toluene/diethylene glycol immiscible solvent pair system. This new use of miscible solvent pairs can enable the formation of MLs for a wider range of NPs.