Freely suspended gold nanoparticle arrays

Freely suspended gold nanoparticle arrays have been fabricated by encapsulation into layer-by-layer nanomembranes. Such nanomembranes (see Figure) retain outstanding micromechanical properties and have an anisotropic mechanical response due to the uniformly oriented nanoparticle-containing stripes. Periodic variation of the Raman scattering across the microarrays is displayed (inset).