Etching & Texturing Polymer Films - Different Options for Patterned Deposition or Encouraging Nucleation

Presented by Charles A. Bishop, C.A. Bishop Consulting Ltd.

A number of the nanotechnologies or psuedonanotechnologies depend upon
controlled nucleation and growth of coatings. Often the coatings remain as a
discontinuous structure or islands. It would therefore be useful to control the
nucleation process to encourage a regular deposition pattern & then to produce islands of a regular uniform size.

The basic idea is that nucleation can be influenced by the surface texture. It
has been shown in nucleation studies that nucleation will take place preferentially at steps on the surface as nucleating against the step offers an extra reduction in surface energy. Thus producing steps or equivalent defects in the surface can help encourage nucleation to take place at these sites.

It has often been commented that roll-to-roll coating is the expected route to
market if this type of product is to be produced economically. However there has
been little done to look at the options to develop some of these processes to make then suitable for roll coating.

In this paper I will try to give some details textured polymer films, by what
methods they have