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Updated: Apr 7, 2026
Fabrication of Large-area Free-standing Ultrathin Polymer Films
Published on: June 3, 2015
Development of Layered Multiscale Porous Thin Films by Tuning Deposition Time and Molecular Weight of
Jing Yu1, Oishi Sanyal1, Andrew P Izbicki1
1Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA.
Abstract:
This work focuses on the design of porous polymeric films with nano- and micro-sized pores existing in distinct zones. The porous thin films are fabricated by the post-treatment of layer-by-layer assembled poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH)/poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) multilayers. In order to improve the processing efficiency, the deposition time is shortened to ≈ 10 s. It is found that fine porous structures can be created even by significantly reducing the processing time. The effect of using polyelectrolytes with widely different molecular weights is also studied. The pore size is increased by using high molecular weight PAH, while high molecular weight PAA minimizes the pore size to nanometer scale. Having gained a precise control over the pore size, layered multiscale porous thin films are further built up with either a microsized porous zone on top of a nanosized porous zone or vice versa.
