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Vasarely painting at the nanoscale on sapphire crystals

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Abstract

We demonstrate that convenient thermal treatment of a specific sapphire vicinal surface can induce the formation of a fully two-dimensional (2D) ordered surface made of a periodic assembly of (006) facets. The similarity between the resulting surface topography and patterns represented in the “hexagon series” of paintings by Vasarely is really striking! We thus propose to call these surfaces as “nanoscaled Vasarely surfaces”. We also show that the self-organization process, which is driven by the minimization of the free energy of a closed system, results in a quasi-linear isothermal growth of the facets’ surface area over time.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been carried out partially within the QMAX Project No. ANR-09-NANO-031 funded by the French National Agency (ANR) in the frame of its program in Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies and Nanosystems (P3N2009). We acknowledge the synchrotron SOLEIL and the ESRF for provision of beamtime at the synchrotron radiation facilities. The authors express their gratitude towards the Limousin Region for financial support of the PhD salaries of AF and CM.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCER, UMR CNRS 7315, Centre Européen de la Céramique, Université de Limoges, 12 rue Atlantis, 87068, Limoges, France

    Caroline Matringe, Elsa Thune, Rémy Cavalotti, Ahmad Fakih & René Guinebretière

  2. Institut Néel UPR CNRS 2940, CRG D2AM Beamline, ESRF, Université Grenoble Alpes, 38042, Grenoble, France

    Stephan Arnaud, Nils Blanc & Nathalie Boudet

  3. SixS Beamline, Synchrotron SOLEIL, BP48, 91192, Gif sur Yvette, France

    Alessandro Coati & Yves Garreau

  4. Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, UMR CNRS 7162, Université de Paris, 75013, Paris, France

    Yves Garreau

  5. Institut Pprime, Département Physique et Mécanique des Matériaux, UPR CNRS 3346, Université de Poitiers, SP2MI, TSA 41123, 86073, Poitiers Cedex 9, France

    David Babonneau

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  1. Caroline Matringe
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  2. Elsa Thune
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  3. Rémy Cavalotti
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  4. Ahmad Fakih
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  5. Stephan Arnaud
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  7. Nathalie Boudet
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  9. Yves Garreau
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  10. David Babonneau
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  11. René Guinebretière
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Correspondence to René Guinebretière.

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Matringe, C., Thune, E., Cavalotti, R. et al. Vasarely painting at the nanoscale on sapphire crystals. Nano Res. 13, 2512–2516 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2888-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2888-4

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