Hierarchical Nanoparticle Ensembles Synthesized by Liquid Phase Directed Self-Assembly

A liquid metal filament supported
on a dielectric substrate was
directed to fragment into an ordered, mesoscale particle ensemble.
Imposing an undulated surface perturbation on the filament forced
the development of a single unstable mode from the otherwise disperse,
multimodal Rayleigh–Plateau instability. The imposed mode paved
the way for a hierarchical spatial fragmentation of the filament into
particles, previously seen only at much larger scales. Ultimately,
nanoparticle radius control is demonstrated using a micrometer scale
switch.