Polymer Fabrication Using Photochemical Processes—A Review

Abstract

The past few decades have seen a demand for developing structures of polymers at micro and sub-micro levels having definite sizes and functionality. Photophysics- and photochemistry-based properties of various polymeric materials have been used repeatedly in several research or industry-oriented applications as in microelectronics, tissue engineering, imaging, copying and recording systems, etc. Photochemical reactions promote excitation of a substrate from the ground state to a higher energy state by absorbing ultraviolet, visible, or infrared radiation, causing the substrate to undergo physical and chemical changes. The physical changes can lead to fluorescence and internal conversions, while a chemical change may lead to a rearrangement, elimination, addition, isomerization, or transfer of electrons within a substrate. The abundance of natural light forms and development of specific technologies such as spatial light modulators, photosensitive materials, and other advanced photonic technologies have caused extensive use of this property for the fabrication of polymeric material with increasing resolutions. This chapter will be mainly dealing with a review of the basic photochemical processes used for the fabrication of different polymeric materials in various applications. Recent advancements and future application prospects for the same are also discussed in detail.