A versatile route to functional biomimetic coatings: ionomers for honeycomb-like structures

Fabrication of honeycomb-patterned polyalkylcyanoacrylate films from monomer solution by breath figures method

“…The monomers and the in situ formed polymer easily crept to the glass, which strongly limited the chain movement and hindered the ordered arrangement of the encapsulated water droplets [9]. As a result, the obtained pores were monodisperse, but not regularly arranged.…”

“…The self-assembly process of the in situ formed PACA was similar to that of the ionomer. The ionomer, which acted as amphiphlic molecule with a hydrophilic head and hydrophobic tail, could be located at the water-solvent interface to form a solid thin film [9]. Although the bond between -OH group of PECA and the water was weak, the breaking of the anchoring could be restrained before the complete evaporation of the solvent by the restriction of the chain movement which will be discussed in the influence of the substrate section.…”

“…Substrates have clear influence on the breath figures films [9,35,51]. To investigate the substrate effect on the resultant morphologies, PECA films was prepared by casting 1 wt% ECA solution onto glass and silicon wafer, respectively.…”

“…Highly ordered micro-porous materials have attracted intensive interest due to their potential applications in biology [1,2], pharmaceuticals [3], tissue engineering [4,5], micrographics [6], optics [7][8][9], and separation [10]. Several strategies such as templating [7,[11][12][13][14][15], self-assembly [16][17][18] and ''breath figures" (BFs) method [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], have been developed for fabricating micro-porous materials.…”

Breath Figures: Fabrication of Honeycomb Porous Films Induced by Marangoni Instabilities

“…The poly(paraphenylene) block being insoluble in carbon disulfide, the copolymer self-assembled into aggregates to form star-like topologies [31,120]. Alpha-telechelic polystyrenes with limited molecular weight (polymers also called ionomers) proved to be good candidates to prepare well-organized honeycomb porous films as the polar chain end induces self-assembly of polymer chains in the organic solvent [30,87,106,121]. The later examples rely on polymer self-assembly induced by the insolubility of either one block or a polar group in the initial diluted solution of organic solvent.…”