The effect of different stabilizers on the formation of self-assembled porous film via the breath-figure technique

The Breath-Figure technique was employed to imprint honeycomb structures in the polymer films via the condensation of water vapor on the surface of an evaporating polymer solution. Generally, the condensed water droplets can be stabilized by an end-functional polymer or by particles added to the polymer solution. In this study, we carried out a systematic experiment on the effect of different stabilizers on the porous honeycomb structure under identical physical conditions. The end-functional polymer produced a large area of regular spherical bubbles, whereas adding particles to the polymer solution leads to smaller arrays of the flattened bottom bubbles. The separation length between pores was larger for polymer/particle sample than that of the end-functional polymer films. In the regular area of polymer/particle film many bubbles were not decorated by particles. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 49: 1430–1436, 2011