Polymer brush-coated interfaces and polymer brush patterns are employed in many current and emerging applications. Challenges related to reaction optimization on surfaces and creating multiplexed patterns has precluded the realization of the full potential of polymer brushes. Here we report a new technique, termed polymer brush hypersurface photolithography, for creating multiplexed polymer brush patterns with a new printing tool that combines microfluidics, a digital micromirror device, and grafted-from polymer brush photochemical reactions. The major advantages of hypersurface photolithography are that hundreds of different reaction conditions can be tested in each print and that arbitrary multiplexed patterns, where the chemical composition and height of each brush can be independently controlled at each micrometer-scale pixel, are easily prepared. This talk will describe applications of hypersurface photolithography in reaction discovery, multidimensional printing, and biological microarrays. These recent results demonstrate that polymer brush hypersurface photolithography has the potential to change entirely how grafted-from polymer brushes are studied and how polymer brush-patterned interfaces are prepared.

Polymer brush hypersurface photolithography: A photochemical platform for polymer brush printing and discovery

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.