Sputter deposition of atoms onto liquid substrates aims at producing colloidal dispersions of small monodisperse ultrapure nanoparticles (NPs). Since sputtering onto liquids combines the advantages of the physical vapor deposition technique and classical colloidal synthesis, the review contains chapters explaining the basics of (magnetron) sputter deposition and the formation of NPs in solution. This review article covers more than 132 papers published on this topic from 1996 to September 2021 and aims at providing a critical analysis of most of the reported data; we will address the influence of the sputtering parameters (sputter power, current, voltage, sputter time, working gas pressure, and the type of sputtering plasma) and host liquid properties (composition, temperature, viscosity, and surface tension) on the NP formation as well as a detailed overview of the properties and applications of the produced NPs.

Nanoporous materials are of great importance for a broad range of applications including catalysis, optical sensors and water filtration. Although several approaches already exist for the creation of nanoporous materials, the race for the development of versatile methods, more suitable for the nanoelectronics industry, is still ongoing. In this communication we report for the first time on the possibility of generating nanoporosity in silver nanocolumns using a dry approach based on the oxidation of silver by direct exposure to a commercially available radio-frequency air plasma. The silver nanocolumns are created by glancing angle deposition using magnetron sputtering of a silver target in pure argon plasma. We show that upon exposure to the rf air plasma, the nanocolumns transform from solid silver into nanoporous silver oxide. We further show that by tuning the plasma pressure and the exposure duration, the oxidation process can be finely adjusted allowing for precisely controlling the morphology and the nanoporosity of the silver oxide nanocolumns. The generation of porosity within the silver nanocolumns is explained according to a cracking-induced oxidation mechanism based on two repeated events occurring alternately during the oxidation process: (i) oxidation of silver upon exposure to the air plasma and (ii) generation of nanocracks and blisters within the oxide layer due to the high internal stress generated within the material during oxidation.

The booming market of flexible electronic displays has urged the development of highly flexible transparent conductive electrodes (FTCE)^1–3 with the ability to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films routinely used as transparent conductive electrodes in photoelectronic devices. The high cost of indium and the poor mechanical stability of ITO under deformation are the main driving forces behind the development of this research area.⁴ The use of metal nanomeshes as FTCE is a promising concept with a real potential to substitute ITO in photoelectronic devices.^5,6 However, the development of a low-cost fabrication approach allowing producing metal nanomesh electrodes with competitive prices and a high performance remains a real bottleneck for the photoelectronic industry. In this paper, we report on a robust approach very easy to implement allowing producing highly flexible metal nanomesh electrodes with high performance at a very low cost. This approach lies on a concept consisting in applying dealloying process to ultra-thin Au-Cu alloy thin films using acidic vapors instead of a liquid phase as routinely done in the literature. Using an appropriate procedure, the nanomeshes can be transferred to any planar or curved support where they can serve as a FTCE. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate that using this approach, one can easily fabricate gold nanomesh electrodes transferred onto polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film surface with 79% of transmittance and a sheet resistance as low as 44 Ω □⁻¹ while maintaining exceptional stability under severe mechanical deformations.