Grafted Functional Polymer Nanostructures Patterned Bottom-Up by Colloidal Lithography and Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (iCVD)

Colloidal lithography, a popular inexpensive alternative to conventional lithography, uses two-dimensional self-assembled monolayer arrays of colloidal nanoparticles as a lithographic template. Combined with initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD), which offers unprecedented opportunity for producing grafted polymeric layers, this work demonstrates a generic bottom-up process as an inexpensive, simple, and environmentally friendly technique for creating robust well-ordered arrays of functional patterned polymeric nanostructures up to 500 nm in height. These grafted nanobowl patterns are produced for a broad material set of functional organic, fluorinated, and silicon containing polymers. These polymers fully retain the organic functionality of their monomeric precursors, are free of wetting defects, and are robustly tethered to the underlying substrate as shown by their ability to withstand aggressive solvent. Furthermore, using this method we pattern a novel low dielectric constant polymer down to 25 nm without the need for environmentally harmful solvents.