Self-organized Archimedean spiral pattern: Regular bundling of fullerene through solvent evaporation

We report the spontaneous generation of an Archimedean spiral pattern of fullerene via the evaporation of solvent. The self-organized spiral pattern exhibited equi-spacing on the order of mu m between neighboring stripes. The characteristics of the spirals, such as the spacing between stripes, the number of stripes, and the band width of stripes, could be controlled by tuning the thickness of the liquid bridge and the concentration of solution. The mechanism of pattern formation is interpreted in terms of a specific traveling wave on the liquid-solid interface accompanied by a stick-slip process of the contact line. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789906]