Electrospray Ionization of Polymers: Evaporation, Drop Fission, and Deposited Particle Morphology1

The fundamental challenge of nanomanufacturing is to create, control, and place immense quantities of nanoscale objects controllably over large surface areas. Electrospray ionization (ESI) has the potential to address this challenge due to its simplicity, applicability to a broad range of materials, and intrinsic scalability. However, the interactions between electrospray parameters and final deposited morphology are not well understood. Experimental results are combined with physics-based models to explain how observed particle size distributions are caused in the spray by evaporation and Coulomb fission of drops with solute concentration gradients.