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Letter

Nature Materials 5, 265–270 (1 April 2006) | doi:10.1038/nmat1611

Kinetically driven self assembly of highly ordered nanoparticle monolayers

Terry P. Bigioni , Xiao-Min Lin , Toan T. Nguyen , Eric I. Corwin , Thomas A. Witten & Heinrich M. Jaeger

When a drop of a colloidal solution of nanoparticles dries on a surface, it leaves behind coffee-stain-like rings of material with lace-like patterns or clumps of particles in the interior. These non-uniform mass distributions are manifestations of far-from-equilibrium effects, such as fluid flows and solvent fluctuations during late-stage drying.