The continuous convective assembly approach has been
intensely considered because of its scalability. By vertically
withdrawing a hydrophilyzed substrate from a low-volumefraction
particle suspension, colloidal particles crystallize on the
substrate where a meniscus thin film is formed. Rapid convective
deposition, shown in Figure 1, uses the horizontal deposition of
a microliter droplet where a concentrated suspension is injected
between the deposition blade and substrate. The small droplet
of suspension is held by the capillary force between the bladeand substrate wedge, which in previous studies was fixed at an
arbitrary angle of either 90° or less. The substrate is then translated
by a linear motor as shown in Figure 1b. This technique also
allows the use of a high volume fraction above 10% and a faster
monolayer deposition speed (i.e., 20-90 μm/s instead of 20-100
μm/min via vertical deposition).