# A New Method for Patterning Azopolymer Thin Film Surfaces

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple bottom-up method using incoherent light and solvent dewetting to create and tailor nanostructures on azopolymer films, enabling advanced surface patterning and reshaping for nanotechnology applications.

## Contribution

It presents a novel, straightforward approach for fabricating and manipulating azopolymer nanostructures with potential for diverse surface patterning applications.

## Key findings

- Formation of customizable doughnut-shaped nanostructures.
- Laser illumination enables further growth and reshaping of nanostructures.
- Potential for studying size-dependent optical properties and fabricating nano-traps.

## Abstract

We present a simple bottom-up approach via an incoherent unpolarized illumination and the choice of a solvent-droplet-induced-dewetting method to photoinducenano doughnuts on the surface of azopolymer thin films. We demonstrate that doughnut-shaped nanostructures can be formed and tailored with a wide range of typical sizes, thus providing a rich field of applications using surface photo-patterning. Furthermore, due to the presence of highly photoactive azobenzene derivative in the material, illumination of these nanostructures by a polarized laser light shows the possibility of a further growth and reshaping opening the way for fundamental studies of size-dependent scaling laws of optical properties and possible fabrication of nano-reactor or nano-trap patterns

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1704.07692