In situ synthesis of silver/epoxy nanocomposites was achieved by UV‐induced polymerization through a simultaneous photoinduced electron transfer and cationic polymerization processes. The FESEM morphological investigation showed a uniform dispersion of silver nanoparticles within the polymeric matrix having narrow size distribution between 15 and 20 nm. The evolution of dielectric properties with frequency and NP content seem to indicate that the nanocomposites of this study remain below the percolation threshold. The dielectric spectroscopy results are in good agreement with the morphological investigation, which showed the absence of NPs percolative network.

including nanotechnology, optoelectronics, photonics, microfluidics, sensing, biotechnology, and separations. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Among the different CVD techniques to deposit polymer thin films, initiatedchemical vapor deposition (iCVD) involves the vapor phase delivery of at least two precursors (a free radical initiator and a monomer) into a vacuum chamber. [17] The vapor flow direction can either be parallel (most of the works published in the literature uses this configuration) or perpendicular to the substrate. iCVD operates according to a free radical polymerization carried out in absence of solvent. The activation of the initiator occurs selectively through an array of heated filaments typically in the temperature range of 200-400 °C producing the primary radicals. The monomers are believed to be preserved from thermal degradation and are condensed on a cooled substrate, usually kept at a temperature lower than 50 °C to promote their adsorption, where they react to generate a polymer. This reaction pathway leads ultimately to the simultaneous formation of welldefined polymer chains and polymeric thin films that can be extremely conformal to the surface of the substrate. iCVD has been extremely successful in depositing a wide variety of polymers including those that are not easily soluble in solvents and can thus be only deposited using this technique. [18,19] Several studies were devoted to the determination of the growth mechanisms during an iCVD process, especially to understand the impact of process parameters on the growth Polymer Thin Films Initiated-chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) is a very promising technique whichhas demonstrated the ability to deposit a large variety of polymers that can be integrated in micro-nanotechnology applications. However, studies on the underlying growth mechanisms responsible for the formation of these thin films remain scarce in the literature. This work shows that the iCVD growth follows surprisingly two regimes: in the first stage of the growth, the deposition rate is relatively slow then increases with the deposition time until a linear growth is reached. The presence of these two growth regimes can be interpreted by taking into account, as the iCVD growth progresses, that the synthesized polymer chains help the monomer adsorption on the substrate which locally increases the concentration of monomers available for the polymerization and thus the growth rate. This increase of the local concentration of monomer consistently correlates with the formation of polymer chains with higher molar mass.