(732f) Assisted Convective Assembly of Colloidal Monolayers

We investigate the coupling between the suspension properties and the deposition process during convective deposition of unary suspensions of colloidal silica microspheres. Deposited thin films from this rapid and scalable process have use in a variety of optical, chemical, and biochemical sensing applications. We can direct the formation and ordering of our thin films in order to create multilayer, monolayer, or submonolayer morphologies. Here we investigate the assembly when including perturbative mechanical forces; by changing the parameters that dictate the properties of the thin film drawn across the substrate we see a clear increase in monolayer deposition rate at otherwise constant deposition properties. Direct measurements of deposition are visualized via high speed confocal laser scanning and scanning electron microscopy in order to generate local dynamic information regarding the deposition as well as the long-range structure of assembled microsphere coatings.