Bottom-Up Growth of Shape-Engineered Molecular Single Crystals

Microfabrication of inorganic materials into geometrically complex components provides the foundation for innumerable technologies, from integrated circuits, to solid-state sensors, actuators, and optical devices. For many applications, crystalline molecular materials offer potential advantages over traditional inorganic substances; however, preparation of complex device architectures has proved difficult due to the weak cohesive binding forces characterizing molecular materials, which makes them vulnerable to damage by conventional top-down processing. Here we combine vapor–liquid–solid deposition with obstruction-templated substrates to demonstrate rapid and simple bottom-up growth of architecturally complex molecular single-crystals, enabling control over where crystals form, their shapes, and topologies. With further development, the concepts introduced here pave the way to a low-cost and materials-efficient route for deterministic growth of molecular components with previously inaccessible levels of shape complexity.