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Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) with high and controlled ionic conductivity are important for energy-related applications, such as solid-state batteries and fuel cells. Herein we disclose a new strategy to fabricate long-range ordered PEMs with tunable ion conducting pathways using a holographic polymerization (HP) method. By incorporating polymer electrolyte into the carefully selected HP system, electrolyte layers/channels with length scales of a few tens of nanometers to micrometers can be formed with controlled orientation and anisotropy; ionic conductivity anisotropy as high as 37 has been achieved., (© 2011 American Chemical Society)

We report the combination of top-down and bottom-up nanomanufacturing techniques to fabricate active, hierarchically structured volume reflection gratings. Holographic polymerization (H-P) formed lamellar structures of approximately 200 nm in thickness, confining a block copolymer (BCP) to approximately 100 nm domains. Subsequently, the BCP self-assembles into nanolayers with a period of approximately 21 nm. We envisage that this approach opens a gateway to fabricating hierarchical nanostructures at different length scales.