Versatile and Functional Surface Patterning of in Situ Breath Figure Pore Formation via Solvent Treatment

Abstract

Surface patterning of in situ pore formation was studied in this research based on the solvent treatment breath figure (stBF) method. By applying the volatile solvent onto the preshaped polymeric objects under humid conditions, hexagonally arranged pore arrays were formed on the surface efficiently. The stBF method was performed on many different polymeric samples with planar and nonplanar surfaces, and facile pore formation was achieved on these surfaces by conducting the solvent treatment in different ways of dipping, casting, and vapor treatment. The water droplets condensed from the humid air were proved to be the origin of the pore arrays just like the case of classic BF process. The influencing factors including solvent types, surfactant addition, and polymer types were evaluated for their impact on the resultant stBF morphologies. In situ threedimensional (3D) pore formation was achieved for both macroscopic-and microscopic-sized 3D-structured objects. Chemical patterning of the introduced minor component was also achieved in the stBF pore-forming process with high efficiency and site selectivity. Moreover, the capability of pore formation and erasure with high spatial accuracy using multiple solvent treatments was revealed for the stBF method to make rewritable and hierarchical patterns. Both the selective chemical decoration and rewritable patterning serve as intriguing features of the stBF method. The establishment of the stBF method makes the classic BF process more flexible to practice and less dependent on the external conditions, showing potential for applications such as facile surface patterning with multifunctionality on devices with complex geometry.

Advanced development of metal oxide nanomaterials for H2gas sensing applications

“…With the development of social economy and the demands of people, flexible H 2 gas sensors based on the conducting polymers such as polyaniline (PANI), polypyrrole (PPy), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) have drawn attention because of their distinctive conductivity, strong mechanical strength, and high operability. 30,308 The polymers have been considered as a promising candidate for flexible devices and wearable electronics 309 . Particularly, when combined with MOx, the rigidity of MOx can be improved, meanwhile the polymer/MOx organic-inorganic hybrid composites will be formed, which exhibit excellent gas sensing performance, including flexibility and room temperature detection.…”

Gradient Porous Structure Templated by Breath Figure Method

“…Recently, several groups, including our group, developed a new method for BF pore fabrication. − Different from the traditional way, the polymer solution was separated into polymer substrate and solvent. The polymer substrate was immersed into the solvent and dried under a humid environment to obtain BF pores.…”

Breath figure templated self-assembly of surface-acylated cellulose nanowhiskers confined as honeycomb films

“…Honeycomb films with well-ordered pores with a narrow size distribution are of significant interest in advanced functional materials, such as separation (Du et al 2013), templates (Galeotti et al 2011), optical and optoelectronic devices (Yabu and Shimomura 2005), biosensors and biomaterials (Min et al 2008;Wan et al 2012), protein arrays (Ju et al 2019), and cell culture scalfolds (Neznalova ´et al 2020). Over the past few decades, a variety of techniques, including lithography (Kim et al 2009), colloidal templates (Hu et al 2009), emulsion (Kasai and Kondo 2004), improved phase separation (IPS) (Bui et al 2015;Slepic ˇka et al 2020), and breath figure (BF) (Huang et al 2020), have been developed to create ordered structures with uniform pore sizes in the nano-to micrometer range. Among these approaches, BF has become the most attractive self-assembly technique for fabricating orderly packed pores with hexagonal array due to its simplicity and versatility (Bunz 2006;Zhang et al 2015).…”