Engineering Monolayers With Strain Field

A binary monolayer on an elastic substrate may self-organize into ordered nanoscale patterns. Here we report a work of using a substrate strain field to guide the self-assembly process. The study shows that straining a substrate uniformly does not influence the pattern. However, a non-uniform strain field significantly influences the size, shape and distribution of self-assembled features. The study suggests a method of strain field design to make various monolayer patterns.