From soft to hard: the generation of functional and complex colloidal monolayers for nanolithography

Take polymer colloids-simple to make and ubiquitously available-let them self-assemble into a monolayer and you have, readily engineered, a sophisticated mask to create highly symmetric surface patterns with nanometre precision. Thirty years after its invention, this process, commonly referred to as colloidal lithography, is far from being old news and an ever-increasing range of scientists continues to use their creativity to come up with increasingly more complex surface patterns. As intriguing this technique is, the devil is in the details and it is far from trivial to achieve high order in a colloidal monolayer. This article reviews available crystallization techniques and discusses their scope and limitations in order to provide just the right method for your next experiment.