Micro‐/Nanofluidics for Liquid‐Mediated Patterning of Hybrid‐Scale Material Structures

Various materials are fabricated to form specific structures/patterns at the micro‐/nanoscale, which exhibit additional functions and performance. Recent liquid‐mediated fabrication methods utilizing bottom‐up approaches benefit from micro‐/nanofluidic technologies that provide a high controllability for manipulating fluids containing various solutes, suspensions, and building blocks at the microscale and/or nanoscale. Here, the state‐of‐the‐art micro‐/nanofluidic approaches are discussed, which facilitate the liquid‐mediated patterning of various hybrid‐scale material structures, thereby showing many additional advantages in cost, labor, resolution, and throughput. Such systems are categorized here according to three representative forms defined by the degree of the free‐fluid–fluid interface: free, semiconfined, and fully confined forms. The micro‐/nanofluidic methods for each form are discussed, followed by recent examples of their applications. To close, the remaining issues and potential applications are summarized. Micro‐/nanofluidic liquid‐mediated patterning (MNLP) methods enable well‐defined precise patterning/structuring of various liquid‐mediated materials such as liquid samples containing target materials as solutes, suspensions, and many other building blocks at the micro‐/nanoscale. Therefore, MNLP confers many additional advantages in cost, labor, resolution, and throughput to liquid‐processed patterning/structuring based on bottom‐up approaches.