Fabrication of Functional Polymer Structures through Bottom-Up Selective Vapor Deposition from Bottom-Up Conductive Templates

Abstract

An electrically induced bottom-up process was introduced for the fabrication of multifunctional nanostructures of polymers. Without requiring complicated photolithography or printing techniques, the fabrication process first produced a conducting template by colloidal lithography to create an interconnected conduction pathway. By supplying an electrical charge to the conducting network, the conducting areas were enabled with a highly energized surface that generally deactivated the adsorbed reactive species and inhibited the vapor deposition of poly- p-xylylene polymers. However, the template allowed the deposition of ordered poly- p-xylylene nanostructures only on the confined and negative areas of the conducting template, in a relatively large centimeter-scale production. The wide selection of functionality and multifunctional capability of poly- p-xylylenes naturally rendered the synergistic and orthogonal chemical reactivity of the resulting nanostructures. With only a few steps, the construction of a nanometer topology with the functionalization of multiple chemical conducts can be achieved, and the selected deposition process represents a state-of-the-art nanostructure fabrication in a simple and versatile approach from the bottom up.

“Nano-garden cultivation” for electrocatalysis: controlled synthesis of Nature-inspired hierarchical nanostructures

“…8 It can indeed control the topology of the pattern accurately and is widely used in the nanofabrication of semiconductors. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Nonetheless, this approach is rather time-consuming and cost-ineffective, hampering its wide applications in different elds. 15,16 Therefore, the bottom-up synthesis is increasingly explored which promises to address the drawbacks of the top-down counterpart.…”

Hydrolysis of Poly(fluoroacrylate) Thin Films Synthesized from the Vapor Phase

“…Due to their hydrophobicity, fluoropolymer thin films are difficult to synthesize using traditional methods, so this discussion of film surface chemistry non-uniformity will be limited to polymer chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques (in-depth discussion of polymer CVD will follow). The existing polymer CVD research focuses on three main applications of in-plane surface chemistry non-uniformity: Janus membranes, − templated (or patterned) surfaces, − and chemical gradients. − Janus membranes are valuable in applications such as membrane distillation, water collection in arid environments, breathable fabric for activewear, and wound dressings with improved blood barrier and wound protection properties. , Templating is used to produce patterns of two contrasting chemistries, which may be used for drug release, biosensors, and artificial skins. − Films with chemical gradients have been used to mimic in vivo cellular growth conditions. − …”