Large-Scale Fabrication of Commercially Available, Nonpolar Linear Polymer Film with a Highly Ordered Honeycomb Pattern

Abstract

Highly ordered, hexagonally patterned poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) thin film is successfully fabricated using an improved phase separation method. A mixture of chloroform and methanol, which is used as a volatile solvent/nonsolvent pair, effectively controls the surface morphology and sensitively determines the ordered pattern. In particular, the methanol accumulation, which induces the formation of a gel-like protective layer and enhances the lateral capillary force, is crucial in the formation of the highly ordered hexagonal pattern even when using a nonpolar polymer such as PMMA. The convergence of cost-effective and large-scale production of highly ordered micropatterned film has wide potential for application, and it can enable new prospects for the commercialization of future high-tech devices that require specific multifunctionality.

Treefrog Toe Pad‐Inspired Micropatterning for High‐Power Triboelectric Nanogenerator

“…Fabrication of Concave and Convex Film : Large‐scale concave film with uniform thickness was prepared by IPS method, as reported in the previous work . Briefly, a 10 wt% solution of PMMA in chloroform was spin‐coated or bar‐coated onto the copper surface and dried.…”

Highly ordered and robust honeycomb films with tunable pore sizes fabricated via UV crosslinking after applying improved phase separation

“…When a non-solvent is used in conjunction with a solvent, it has dual roles of increasing the number of nucleation sites and reducing the crystallization time of the polymer through increasing the extent of the phase separation [27,28]. Accordingly, the non-solvent content can be expected to determine the aggregate size and pore volume of the resulting porous structure.…”

“…These limitations are critical obstacles to commercially producing large-scale films. Recently, we developed a new strategy referred to as the "improved phase separation method" for preparing highly ordered honeycomb film from various starting polymers in ambient air environments, and the surface morphologies of the patterned films were effectively controlled through varying the solvent mixture compositions as well as modulating the experimental processing conditions [27,28]. In this paper, we apply this strategy in order to fabricate ordered honeycomb structures in PS and we thoroughly investigate the effect of the solvent compositions and experimental processing conditions on the surface morphology of the patterned films.…”

Photoluminescent Honeycomb Structures from Polyoxometalates and an Imidazolium‐Based Ionic Liquid Bearing a π‐Conjugated Moiety and a Branched Aliphatic Chain

“…[5] During the past two de-cades,this strategy has been significantly developed by avariety of researchers. [10,11] Ab ig advantage of the honeycombs tructures fabricated by the BF methodi st hat the functions of the films can be facilely tuned by engineeringt he starting materials. [6][7][8][9] Recentp rogress has been focused on furthere xpanding the field from fundamental researcht oe ncouraging industrialized applications by the productiono fl arge-area honeycomb structures.…”

“…[6][7][8][9] Recentp rogress has been focused on furthere xpanding the field from fundamental researcht oe ncouraging industrialized applications by the productiono fl arge-area honeycomb structures. [10,11] Ab ig advantage of the honeycombs tructures fabricated by the BF methodi st hat the functions of the films can be facilely tuned by engineeringt he starting materials. Up to now,v arious candidates have been explored to form honeycomb structures.B esides polymers with diversec ompositions and structures, [12][13][14][15] av ariety of materials with attractive properties have also been tried, including carbon nanotubes( CNTs), [16,17] grapheneo xide (GO), [18] proteins, [19] small organic molecules, [20][21][22] and inorganic-organic hybrids.…”