Relative Humidity Effects in Dip-Pen Nanolithography of Alkanethiol Mixtures

In the dip-pen nanolithography of a binary alkanethiol mixture of mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHA) and 1-octadecanethiol (ODT) at a relative humidity (RH) of less than 80%, two distinct phases of MHA and ODT were patterned. However, on ramping up the RH to greater than 80%, only MHA was observed to pattern. This effect was reversible, as shown by the fact that two distinct thiol regions were again patterned on lowering the RH. This segregation could be exploited for generating exclusive MHA (hydrophilic) templates for subsequent architectures from a mixture of alkanethiols driven solely by the RH.