Surface‐Grafted Polymer‐Assisted Electroless Deposition of Metals for Flexible and Stretchable Electronics

Abstract

Surface-grafted polymers, that is, ultrathin layers of polymer coating covalently tethered to a surface, can serve as a particularly promising nanoplatform for electroless deposition (ELD) of metal thin films and patterned structures. Such polymers consist of a large number of well-defined binding sites for highly efficient and selective uptake of ELD catalysts. Moreover, the polymer chains provide flexible 3D network structures to trap the electrolessly deposited metal particles, leading to strong metal-substrate adhesion. In the past decade, surface-grafted polymers have been demonstrated as efficient nanoplatforms for fabricating durable and high-performance metal coatings by ELD on plastic substrates for applications in flexible and stretchable electronics. This focus review summarizes these recent advances, with a particular focus on applications in polymeric flexible and stretchable substrates. An outlook on the future challenges and opportunities in this field is given at the end of this paper.

Microfluidic Patterning of Metal Structures for Flexible Conductors by In Situ Polymer‐Assisted Electroless Deposition

“…More recently, several advances in polymer‐assisted ELD16, 17, 18 have been accomplished for the fabrication of highly conductive metal structures for flexible and stretchable interconnects,19, 20, 21, 22 supercapacitors,23, 24 conductive textiles,25, 26 and optoelectronic devices 27, 28. The polymer‐assisted ELD typically involves three major steps: surface modification of functional polymer anchoring layers, loading of catalyst moieties to the polymer anchoring layer by ion exchange, and site‐selective metal electroless deposition.…”

Compressible Metalized Soft Magnetic Sponges with Tailorable Electrical and Magnetic Properties

“…Starting from this concept, we employed dopamine as both binding agent and the initiator for one‐step grafting of polymer brushes with quaternary ammonium cations onto sponge fiber through dopamine self‐polymerization and initiated free radical polymerization reaction of 2‐(methacryloyloxy)ethyltrimethylammonium chloride (METAC). The introduction of PMETAC blocks in copolymer modified layer cannot only immobilize negative catalyst moieties through electrostatic interaction, and can also enhance the adhesion of subsequent metal deposited layer to sponge skeleton …”

“…The introduction of PMETAC blocks in copolymer modified layer cannot only immobilize negative catalyst moieties through electrostatic interaction, and can also enhance the adhesion of subsequent metal deposited layer to sponge skeleton. [53] Figure 1 showed the proposed reaction mechanism of dopamine self-polymerization and initiated-polymerization of METAC monomers. After oxidation, cyclization and rearrangement, dopamine was transformed into 5,6-dihydroxyindole and 5,6-indolequinone, which can interact to produce semiquinone radical species by single electron transfer as shown in Figure 1b, and then as-produced free radicals can either self-polymerize or initiate the polymerization of METAC monomers to create the adhesive layer containing both catechol moieties and quaternary ammonium ions with double functions of adhesion and chemical absorption.…”

Durable, Washable, and Flexible Conductive PET Fabrics Designed by Fiber Interfacial Molecular Engineering

“…In principle, this copper coating method could be extended to the coating of metals on other synthetic fabrics, polymer films, and bulk polymer materials. Such conductive fabrics could develop a wide variety of applications in wearable and flexible electronics, radiation and electromagnetic protection, energy, and biomedical industries, and it also provides an excellent alternative method to obtain a metal coating on polymer substrates …”