EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) is a solvent-free, cost efficient technique to synthesize highly conformal organic thin films from the vapor phase. The underlying free radical polymerization happens directly on the material to be coated, without additional solvents or post-reactional treatment. In our work we present the highly controllable deposition of photoswitchable copolymers via iCVD, using a novel device for transportation of the solid chromophore inside the reactor chamber. Based on the underlying principle of iCVD, we were able to chemically modify the composition of the polymers which had a significant effect on the photoswitchability of the incorporated chromophore. Patterned polymer coatings, deposition on flexible substrates and writable surfaces were achieved, benefitting from the fact that the photoswitch used by us is excited by blue instead of UV-light. This advantage minimizes photodegradation of both substrate and functional coating.
Due to high controllability of the uniform film-formation, topography-preservation and manifold choice of potential substrates it is possible to equip surfaces with photoswitchable properties in the nano-range without losing the characteristic properties of the material.