Controlling the Growth Speed Evaporation Rate and Temperature Dependence

1 Controlling the Growth Speed Evaporation Rate and Temperature Dependence 

The evaporation rate around the drying region can be influenced both by the temperature of the colloidal suspension close to the meniscus and by the relative humidity of the environment. These two experimental approaches were explored in literature either by controlling the substrate temperature or by controlling both the environment humidity and the temperature. Nevertheless, control of the assembly process through humidity has shown to be experimentally difficult, and studies reported in literature lead to differing conclusions.  

This method allows for the creation of a uniform monolayer and provides an estimation of the growth rate of the layer since Vc = Vs. The experiment was performed for different solid content values ranging from 0.1% to 0.5%. The critical influence of O on the assembly rate is clearly observable on the curves, as demonstrated in previous studies. According to Eq. 15.1, Vc increases nonlinearly together with.  

The existence of three different regimes, namely, assembly, stagnation, and disassembly, and the reversibility of the whole mechanism are clearly a convenient feature in convective assembly. 

The three regimes can be directly accessed by temperature control, which is experimentally easy to implement. This provides the possibility to not only switch on and off the assembly process but also allow to modify or repair an already existing layer (e.g., removing defects such as voids or switching back multilayers to monolayers). 

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