At block 504, the substrate is immersed in a liquid to aid in the adhesion of NCs to the substrate. In an exemplary embodiment, the liquid is about 5% 3-MPTS in toluene, and the substrate is immersed in this liquid overnight. In a particular embodiment, the surface of the substrate may be derivatized with octadecylphophonic acid (ODPA).

At block 512, a nanoimprinting template is prepared from a master template. The template may be a PDMS, h-PDMS, and/or PVA template. In one embodiment, the template is formed by mixing about 10:1 ratio of Sylgard 184 prepolymer and crosslinker, and pouring the mixture on the master template. In this embodiment, the template is then degassed for about 1 hour and cured at about 120 C for about 30 minutes. The template is then released from the master template. The PDMS template may have various arrays for different diameters and pitches of nanopillars, e.g. about 120 nm/700 nm, about 200 nm/500 nm, about 270 nm/700 nm, about 300 nm/850 nm, etc. The template may be formed with arrays to construct nanolines, nanopillars and/or nanoholes. Other suitable nanostructures will be understood by one of skill in the art.

At block 514, a dispersion of NCs in a solvent (e.g., hexanes, octanes, etc.) is dropped onto the substrate. The amount of dispersion dropped onto the substrate may be about 100 uL, or any other amount in accordance with the size of the substrate. In one embodiment, the NCs have undergone solution ligand exchange according to flowchart 20. In an alternative embodiment, the NCs have not undergone ligand exchange.