Wet stamping of microscale periodic precipitation patterns

Abstract

Although periodic precipitation (PP) phenomena have long attracted scientific interest, their study has been limited to macroscopic systems and simple geometries. An experimental method was developed that allows the generation of highly regular, microscopic PP patterns of arbitrary geometries. Generic scaling laws were established that related the morphologies and topographies of the PP patterns to the geometrical parameters of the system. It was possible to control PP at the level of stochastic phenomena and thus to induce micropatterns of desired chiralities and to control the propagation of defects in them. A 3D nucleation-and-growth model was developed that faithfully reproduced the patterns observed in experiments.