Here, the voltage and current conditions required to form a nanoparticle chain bridging a gap between electrodes that is several tens of micrometres wide have been examined. When a voltage is applied to a gap between electrodes covered with a dispersion of nanoparticles, the nanoparticles are trapped in the gap by dielectrophoresis, forming a nanoparticle chain. It has been considered that a nanoparticle chain is formed in a gap only when a voltage higher than a certain value with a current lower than a certain value is applied to the gap. In this work, certain voltages were first applied with changing current to a 10 μm-wide gap between electrodes covered with a dispersion of 150 nm-diameter gold nanoparticles, and they found that a nanoparticle chain was formed only when 6.1 V rms or more with 15 mA rms or less was applied. Next, the process of nanoparticle chain formation in a 10 μm-wide gap was directly observed with high-magnification and high-speed microscopy, and they clarified the behaviour of nanoparticle chain formation when a low voltage, high voltage with high current, and high voltage with low current were applied. Finally, they measured the critical value of current for nanoparticle chain formation in a gap several tens of micrometres wide.
