Electrically conductive micropaths made from assembled 1D particle structure: novel method of fabrication, and micropath characterization

Assembly of single-particle thick one-dimensional microstructures on substrates is desired for performing different fundamental studies, and holds promise for a variety of practical applications. This includes electronic applications, i.e., formation of highly conductive electrical paths. There are many approaches for fabrication of such structures, but they are expensive, time-consuming, or inefficient, requiring access to advanced tools and laboratories. Moreover, they are not suitable for fabricating microstructures with programmable shapes, arbitrary lengths, and positioning. Here we report a method that overcomes these limitations and facilitates the continuous production of particle paths outside bulk liquid on various substrate materials and morphologies, using a variety of particle materials with wide size range. The method is simple yet robust and easy to implement, and is straightforwardly scalable, involving a synergetic action of electric-field assembly, capillary and electrostatic interactions [1]. Using our developed method, we fabricated micropaths of different widths, height-to-width ratio, and the magnitude of electrical conductivity. The obtained results from impedance studies are showing big potential in their future applications and are in good agreement with theoretical calculations.