A breath figure (BF) is the water droplet array that forms when moisture comes in contact with a cold substrate. This water droplet array has been widely utilized in the past two decades as a versatile soft template for the fabrication of polymeric porous films. Accordingly, the ordered pores on the polymer films formed with such a method are named a breath figure array (BFA).The BF templating technique is undergoing rapid development. Several unconventional BF processes have been established to prepare porous films with unique morphologies or primary materials, and various newly developed functionalization techniques have significantly improved the performance of polymeric films with BFA, leading to novel applications, including templates, biosensors, and separation membranes. These recent achievements will be described in this Minireview. 相似文献
High‐performance catalysts and photovoltaics are required for building an environmentally sustainable society. Because catalytic and photovoltaic reactions occur at the interfaces between reactants and surfaces, the chemical, physical, and structural properties of interfaces have been the focus of much research. To improve the performance of these materials further, inorganic porous materials with hierarchic porous architectures have been fabricated. The breath figure technique allows preparing porous films by using water droplets as templates. In this study, a valuable preparation method for hierarchic porous inorganic materials is shown. Hierarchic porous materials are prepared from surface‐coated inorganic nanoparticles with amphiphilic copolymers having catechol moieties followed by sintering. Micron‐scale pores are prepared by using water droplets as templates, and nanoscale pores are formed between the nanoparticles. The fabrication method allows the preparation of hierarchic porous films from inorganic nanoparticles of various shapes and materials.
Ordered porous films of polymers with uniform pore size and ordered porous structure are extensively applied in many fields such as separation, biology, photoelectric devices, templates, and other fields, which is the current research frontier in the field of porous films. Among different methods of preparing ordered porous films, the method of breath figure (BF) has attracted much attention due to its simplicity and adjustability. Many factors have been proved to influence the structure of the porous films by the BF method and the used polymer is the most important one. Recently, under the background of energy crisis and environmental pollution, polymers from biomass have received a lot of attention because of their advantages of low carbon, green, good biocompatibility, and easy modification. Up to now, a large number of porous films of biomass-based polymers including cellulose, polylactic acid, and urushiol-based polymers have been prepared by the BF method. Therefore, this article is to make a detailed review of the physicochemical modification of biomass-based polymers, the preparation of ordered porous films via BF and their applications. The method of BF is firstly introduced. The research progress of porous films of biomass-based polymers including cellulose, polylactic acid, and urushiol-based polymers prepared by the BF method is then reviewed. Finally, this review highlights the use of honeycomb films as cell culture substrates, drug delivery, wound dressings, optoelectronic devices and mimicking woody cell walls. The prospects for the development of porous films of biomass-based polymers are proposed. Future research could focus on the preparation of ordered, functional, and biocompatible porous films with smaller pore sizes for more applications in different fields, such as separation, tissue engineering, and controlled release of drugs.
Graphic abstract
Ordered porous films of biomass-based polymers via physical and chemical modification would be prepared by the breath figure method for different applications.
Porous surface patterns are used in a wide variety of practical applications. Honeycomb‐patterned porous polymer films are good templates for preparing porous surfaces due to their simple fabrication and the arrangement of pores on the surface. Catechol groups include in adhesive protein of mussels have attracted much attention due to their highly and substrate‐independent adhesive properties. In this paper, highly and substrate‐independent adhesive honeycomb‐patterned porous polymer films are prepared by using amphiphilic copolymer having catechol moieties. Furthermore, porous surface patterns are transferred on various organic or inorganic substrates by wet etching with using adhesive honeycomb films as templates.
In this report, the use of a simple and versatile technique of templated electrodeposition through colloidal templates to produce nanostructured films of Pt and Au with regular submicron spherical holes arranged in a hexagonal close-packed structure is described. The templates were produced by self assembly of a monodispersed suspension of polystyrene spheres on gold substrates using capillary forces. The self assembly process was modified through the chemical modification of the gold substrate with cysteamine thiol. Films of Pt and Au were prepared by electrochemical deposition through the template. The electrochemical deposition charge and the current time curve were used to control the film height with a precision of approximately 10 nm. The colour of the nanostructured films changed as the film thickness was changed. On the other hand, high surface area of the nanostructured Pt film on top of the gold substrate was calculated using electrochemical cyclic voltammogram. About 55 roughness factor was obtained. SAXS measurements showed strong scattering at low angles indicating the presence of a well-ordered mesostructure. 相似文献
We report on the formation of ordered arrays of micron-sized holes on the surface of polymer films cast from volatile solvents
in the presence of humidity in vacuum. A lower pressure in a vacuum chamber can accelerate the evaporation of solvent in the
same way as the accelerating action of the air flowing across the solvent surface and results in the formation of porous films
via the “breath figure” templating method. This vacuum technique has a good reproductiveness for the fabrication of the well-ordered
porous films in a large area. It is very controllable to prepare the porous films in a vacuum chamber via controlling the
vacuum level. The pore sizes can be easily tuned from 5.6 to 17.1 μm by changing the vacuum level. The mechanism for the formation
of the porous films in vacuum was also discussed. The polymer films with ordered porous structure and tunable pore sizes have
potential applications in many areas such as microarrays and as scaffolds for tissue engineering.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. 相似文献
