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.