Applying Droplets and Films in Evaporative Lithography

Abstract

This review covers experimental results of evaporative lithography and analyzes existing mathematical models of this method. Evaporating droplets and films are used in different fields, such as cooling of heated surfaces of electronic devices, diagnostics in health care, creation of transparent conductive coatings on flexible substrates, and surface patterning. A method called evaporative lithography emerged after the connection between the coffee ring effect taking place in drying colloidal droplets and naturally occurring inhomogeneous vapor flux densities from liquid--vapor interfaces was established. Essential control of the colloidal particle deposit patterns is achieved in this method by producing ambient conditions that induce a nonuniform evaporation profile from the colloidal liquid surface. Evaporative lithography is part of a wider field known as "evaporative-induced self-assembly" (EISA). EISA involves methods based on contact line processes, methods employing particle interaction effects, and evaporative lithography. As a rule, evaporative lithography is a flexible and single-stage process with such advantages as simplicity, low price, and the possibility of application to almost any substrate without pretreatment. Since there is no mechanical impact on the template in evaporative lithography, the template integrity is preserved in the process. The method is also useful for creating materials with localized functions, such as slipperiness and self-healing. For these reasons, evaporative lithography attracts increasing attention and has a number of noticeable achievements at present. We also analyze limitations of the approach and ways of its further development.

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Nonuniform heating of a substrate in evaporative lithography
• Monte Carlo simulation of particle size separation in evaporating bi-dispersed colloidal droplets on hydrophilic substrates
• Average cluster size inside sediment left after droplet desiccation
• Circulating Marangoni flows within droplets in smectic films
• Fluid flow structures in an evaporating sessile droplet depending on the droplet size and properties of liquid and substrate
• Identification of 2D colloidal assemblies in images: a threshold processing method versus machine learning
• Marangoni instability in oblate droplets suspended on a circular frame
• Suppression of sawtooth oscillations when using a finite-difference scheme for mass transfer simulation via the lubrication approximation in a droplet evaporated on a substrate
• Simulation aspects of patterning polymer films via evaporative lithography and composite substrates
• Simulation of the thermocapillary assembly of a colloidal cluster during the evaporation of a liquid film in an unevenly heated cell
• Shape of liquid meniscus in open cells of varying geometry: a combined study via simulation and experiment
• Influence of fluid flows on electric double layers in evaporating colloidal sessile droplets