Proton-Assisted Assembly of Colloidal Nanoparticles into Wafer-Scale Monolayers in Seconds

Underwater adhesion processes in nature promise controllable assembly of functional nanoparticles for industrial mass production; However, their artificial strategies have faced challenges to uniformly transfer nanoparticles into a monolayer, particularly those below 100 nm in size, over large areas. Here a scalable "one-shot" self-limiting nanoparticle transfer technique is presented, enabling the efficient transport of nanoparticles from water in microscopic volumes to an entire 2-inch wafer in a remarkably short time of 10 seconds to reach near-maximal surface coverage (approximate to 40%) in a 2D mono-layered fashion. Employing proton engineering in electrostatic assembly accelerates the diffusion of nanoparticles (over 50 mu m2/s), resulting in a hundredfold faster coating speed than the previously reported results in the literature. This charge-sensitive process further enables "pick-and-place" nanoparticle patterning at the wafer scale, with large flexibility in surface materials, including flexible metal oxides and 3D-printed polymers. As a result, the fabrication of wafer-scale disordered plasmonic metasurfaces in seconds is successfully demonstrated. These metasurfaces exhibit consistent resonating colors across diverse material and geometrical platforms, showcasing their potential for applications in full-color painting and optical encryption devices. Proton-assisted assembly, inspired by Mussel's underwater adhesion, promises scalable but swift self-limiting assembly of functional nanoparticles for industrial mass production. The efficient transport of nanoparticles is realized from a microscopic volume of water into the wafer-scale monolayers within several seconds, stemming from the electrostatically accelerated nanoparticle's diffusion. image