TY - JOUR
T1 - Optimization of 4D polymer printing within a massively parallel flow-through photochemical microreactor
AU - Liu, Xiaoming
AU - Zheng, Yeting
AU - Peurifoy, Samuel R.
AU - Kothari, Ezan A.
AU - Braunschweig, Adam B.
N1 - Funding Information:
A. B. B. is grateful to the Department of Defense (MURI 15RT0675) and the National Science Foundation (DBI-1353823) for generous support and the Army Research Office (W911NF-14-1-0164) for supplying the fluorescence spectrometer. We are thankful to Carlos Carbonnel for assistance in revising the manuscript. This work is dedicated to K. Eric Drexler on the 30th anniversary of the publication of "Engines of Creation".
Publisher Copyright:
© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016.
PY - 2016/5/21
Y1 - 2016/5/21
N2 - 4D polymer micropatterning-where the position (x,y), height (z), and monomer composition of each feature in a brush polymer array is controlled with sub-1 micrometer precision-is achieved by combining a mobile, massively parallel flow-through photoreactor with thiol-acrylate photoinitiated brush polymerizations. Polymers are grown off the surface by introducing monomer, photoinitiator, and solvent into the microfluidic reaction chamber, and using light reflected onto the back of elastomeric massively-parallel tip arrays to localize reactions on the surface. The ability to form fluorescent patterns by the thiol-acrylate brush polymerization from a thiol-terminated glass surface was explored with respect to reaction time, light intensity, monomer:photoinitiator ratio, and compression between the elastomeric pyramidal tips and the substrate, resulting in feature diameters as small as 480 nm, and polymer heights approaching 500 nm. Subsequently, optimized printing conditions were used to create patterns containing multiple inks by introducing new monomers via the flow-through microfluidics. Because of the wide-functional group tolerance of the thiol-acrylate reaction, surfaces enabled by this printing strategy could possess emergent optoelectronic, biological, or mechanical properties that arise from synergies between molecular composition and nanoscale geometries.
AB - 4D polymer micropatterning-where the position (x,y), height (z), and monomer composition of each feature in a brush polymer array is controlled with sub-1 micrometer precision-is achieved by combining a mobile, massively parallel flow-through photoreactor with thiol-acrylate photoinitiated brush polymerizations. Polymers are grown off the surface by introducing monomer, photoinitiator, and solvent into the microfluidic reaction chamber, and using light reflected onto the back of elastomeric massively-parallel tip arrays to localize reactions on the surface. The ability to form fluorescent patterns by the thiol-acrylate brush polymerization from a thiol-terminated glass surface was explored with respect to reaction time, light intensity, monomer:photoinitiator ratio, and compression between the elastomeric pyramidal tips and the substrate, resulting in feature diameters as small as 480 nm, and polymer heights approaching 500 nm. Subsequently, optimized printing conditions were used to create patterns containing multiple inks by introducing new monomers via the flow-through microfluidics. Because of the wide-functional group tolerance of the thiol-acrylate reaction, surfaces enabled by this printing strategy could possess emergent optoelectronic, biological, or mechanical properties that arise from synergies between molecular composition and nanoscale geometries.
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U2 - 10.1039/c6py00283h
DO - 10.1039/c6py00283h
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84970021761
VL - 7
SP - 3229
EP - 3235
JO - Polymer Chemistry
JF - Polymer Chemistry
SN - 1759-9954
IS - 19
ER -