Vasarely painting at the nanoscale on sapphire crystals

Caroline Matringe (1) , Elsa Thune (1) , Rémy Cavalotti (1) , Ahmad Fakih (1) , Stephan Arnaud (2) , Nils Blanc (2) , Nathalie Boudet (2) , Alessandro Coati (3) , Yves Garreau (4) , David Babonneau (5) , René Guinebretière (1)

1 IRCER - Institut de Recherche sur les CERamiques
2 NEEL - CRG - CRG & Grands instruments
3 SSOLEIL - Synchrotron SOLEIL
4 MPQ (UMR_7162) - Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques
5 PPNa - Physique et Propriétés des Nanostructures [Institut Pprime]

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-organisation process, which is driven by the minimisation of the free energy of a closed system, results in a quasi-linear isothermal growth of the facets' surface area over time.

Mots clés: Nanoscaled Vasarely surfaces; 2D-Self-organization; Sapphire vicinal surfaces

Domaines: Matière Condensée [cond-mat]; Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Caroline Matringe, Elsa Thune, Rémy Cavalotti, Ahmad Fakih, Stephan Arnaud, et al.. Vasarely painting at the nanoscale on sapphire crystals. Nano Research, 2020, 13 (9), pp.2512-2516. ⟨10.1007/s12274-020-2888-4⟩. ⟨hal-02989537⟩