A novel way of fabricating patterned porous surface with responsive functionalities has been demonstrated by applying thermo-responsive microgel-assisted Breath Figure (BF) process. During the fast formation of porous surface through the bottom-up BF process, poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-co-acrylic acid (PNIPAm-co-AA) microgels spontaneously assemble onto the interior walls of each pores driven by the combination force of �Mickring emulsions� and capillary flow. Surfaces with layered-like morphology (LS) and with dome-like protrusion-arrays (DS) were then revealed on those microgel-aggregating areas by scanning electron microscope (SEM) after the surface treatment at temperatures below and above the Volume Phase Transition Temperature (VPTT) of PNIPAm microgels, respectively. Such structural transition from �layer� to �protrusions� largely attributes to the intensive assembly of microgels through BF process. Moreover, the morphological transition has been confirmed to accompany significant distinction in surface contact angle (CA) measurements. CA of LS showed dramatic reducing of 85� while the decrease was only 22� for DS. Also, the complete absorption time of the placed water droplet was 10 minutes for LS, however, 23 minutes was required for that of the DS . Such morphologically responsive surface could be able to find application in biocatalysis after the encapsulation of functional enzyme molecules.

Fabrication of morphologically responsive surface via microgel-assisted breath figures method

248th National Meeting (2014)

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