Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is commonly used for the formation of inorganic thin films for example in electronic, MEMS, and energy devices at the micro- and nanoscale. As a way to create organic polymer thin films by CVD, the plasma enhanced or plasma activated pathway has been traditionally employed to yield films that typically however do not fully resemble a polymer in the strictest sense of being a long chain of well-defined chemical repeat units. Here, we demonstrate initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) as a unique and viable pathway for enabling polymerization chemistries found in the liquid phase to produce stoichiometrically well-defined polymers in a CVD context. By taking advantage of the liquid-free CVD environment, the polymers can be facilely synthesized in situ as highly conformal thin films on nanostructured substrate surfaces. We will illustrate iCVD's strengths and versatility by highlighting our recent work in creating polymers for energy harvesting and storage devices, in particular with devices which have nanostructured architectures that can uniquely take advantage of iCVD's processing capabilities. We will describe our understanding of the iCVD process, in detailing the iCVD reaction pathways, and describing the effect of processing conditions on the resulting structure and properties of polymers in creating enhanced energy devices, including solar cells and supercapacitors.

Novel chemical vapor deposition methods for polymer thin film devices

244th National Meeting (2012)

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