Preparation of Micro- and Nanopatterns of Polymer Chains Grafted onto Flexible Polymer Substrates

Abstract

In this work a simple novel method for preparing micro- and nanoscale patterns of polymer chains grafted onto flexible polymer substrates is described. A combination of the two techniques of radiation grafting and "grafting-from" has been made. This combination makes it possible to prepare grafted structures having micro- or nanoscale lateral dimensions that are determined by the electron beam or X-ray irradiation patterns used. The height of the grafted features can be controlled by the irradiation dose or such grafting reaction conditions as time, temperature, or monomer concentration. Our first results for nanopatterned samples demonstrate resolution comparable to those of other polymer-based lithography processes.

Polymer Brushes by Nitroxide‐Mediated Polymerization

“…'Top-down' techniques are in general well understood processes, and are reproducible and scalable, such as microcontact printing, [102][103][104] photolithography, [71,[105][106][107][108] and electron-beam lithography. [109][110][111] Members of the 'bottom-up' category are block copolymer lithography, [112] nanosphere lithography, [113] or LB lithography. [80] The first report on structured polymer brushes obtained by NMP used a photolithographic approach.…”

Characterization of patterned poly(methyl methacrylate) brushes under various structures upon solvent immersion

“…Furthermore, micropatterned polymer brushes are of crucial importance to the development of biochips, microarrays, and microdevices for cell growth, regulation of protein adsorption, and drug delivery [13][14][15]. A variety of techniques, including microlithography [16] and chemical amplification of patterned monolayers from selfassembly [17,18] have been developed for fabricating patterned polymer brushes. The applicability of these patterned polymer films is restricted by their limited stability with respect to solvents and their tendency to undergo subsequent chemical reactions [19] as well as by difficulties in their preparation over large areas and complicated topographies.…”

Fabrication of Robust Biomolecular Patterns by Reactive Microcontact Printing onN-Hydroxysuccinimide Ester-Containing Polymer Films

“…[1] In the development of rapid, robust screening microarrays several strategies have been successfully applied. These comprise, among others, robot-based high-precision contactprinting, [2] multistep photolithography, [3] selective molecularassembly patterning, [4] and soft-lithographic approaches, such as the microcontact printing (lCP) method. [5] The lCP technique developed by Kumar and Whitesides [6] is widely used for the fabrication of monolayer-based micrometer-and sub-micrometer-scale patterns.…”