Functional surfaces through the creation of adhesion and charged patterns on azopolymer surface relief gratings

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how azopolymers can be patterned with adhesion and charge properties using interference illumination, enabling the creation of functional surfaces with tailored molecular and topographical features.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate combined surface relief and chemical patterns on azopolymers through optical interference, revealing the interplay between birefringence and mass transport.

Findings

Adhesion patterns can be created without surface relief gratings when birefringence dominates.

Higher frequency adhesion and relief patterns are achieved when mass transport dominates.

Regions with molecules aligned parallel exhibit increased negative charge.

Abstract

We show that an azopolymer can be used to create a supramolecular architecture in a parallel process with patterned surface properties. By illuminating with an interference pattern, we created adhesion and charge patterns that reflect the molecular ordering. We studied the recording process in two limit situations. When birefringence dominates over mass transport, an adhesion pattern was recorded even in absence of a surface relief grating (SRG). When mass transport dominates, we measured a higher frequency adhesion and relief patterns on top of the SRG. We measured an increased negative charge in the regions where molecules are expected to be parallel aligned in trans conformational state.