Facile Fabrication of Large Area Polystyrene Colloidal Crystal Monolayer via Surfactant-free Langmuir-Blodgett Technique

A facile and novel method for the production of a large area of well-ordered polystyrene(PS)colloidal crystal monolayer was established using the surfactant-free Langmuir-Blodgett(LB)technique.The hydrophobic property(film-forming ability)of PS spheres was improved by a thermo-rheology treatment before LB assembly,and a large film was obtained.In contrast to the traditional LB technique,no surfactant was needed in this method,which could eliminate the additional contamination of surfactants in the preparation process and provided the products with versatile applications in nanosphere lithography(NSL)for biosensor,surface plasmon resonance,and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy.