Easy Way to Fabricate Nanostructures on a Reactive Polymer Surface.

DIEGO F. ACEVEDO; GERARDO MARTÍNEZ; JAVIER TOLEDO ARANA; EDITH I. YSLAS; FRANK MUCKLICH; CÉSAR BARBERO; HORACIO J. SALAVAGIONE

JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY B - (Print)

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Año: 2009 vol. 113 p. 14661 - 14666

1520-6106

The fabrication of advanced architectures in poly(glycidylmethacrylate-co-styrene) (PGMA-S) copolymers using direct laser interference patterning (DLIP) and its selective functionalization is reported. The structure features depend mainly on the laser energy used and on the styrene content in the copolymer. The topography, measured by electronic scanning microscopy, show regular and ordered arrays for the polystyrene (PS) and for the copolymers PGMA-S. The surface PS homopolymer is ablated at the position of maximum light fluence (constructive interference), while in the copolymers the surfaces swell up at the regions with maximalfluence. The styrene units are shown to absorb the laser energy giving photothermally ablated regions or promoting the chemical decomposition of acrylate units or polymer segments. In that way, DLIP provides a unique way to produce regularly ordered structures protruding or depressing from the polymer surface without altering to a large extent the chemical nature of the material. In addition, it is shown, using fluorescence microscopy, that amine-polyethylenglycol-CdSe quantum dots (NH2-PEG-QDs) could be spatially localizedby reaction with patterned surfaces of PGMA-S. In that way, it is proven that a patterned and chemically reactive surface can be created using DLIP of PGMA-S.