Preparation and photopatterning of Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) films of a novel copolymer containing swallow‐tailed double naphthalene groups

A new series of copolymer poly(N-hexadecylmethacrylamide-co-dinaphthalen-2-yl 2-allylmalonate) poly(HDMAco-DNAM)s containing swallow-tailed double naphthyl groups and long alkyl group were designed and synthesized. The behavior of copolymer molecular arranging on water surface, patterning properties of copolymer LB films, and photochemical reactions in ultrathin film were investigated. The poly(HDMA-co-DNAM)s could form a stable, well-defined molecular orientation Langmuir monolayer at air/water interface. The polymer main chain was lying flat on water surface and the side chains attached to the main chain stretching out at the angle of about 50-. The results obtained showed that a well-ordered layer-by-layer structure was successfully controlled in LB films, in which most of naphthyl groups in poly(HDMA-co-DNAM)s LB films were in dimer and the copolymer LB films were decomposed hardly upon irradiation of deep UV light. We found that the exposed and unexposed regions of the poly(HDMA-co-DNAM)s copolymer LB films had solubility differentiation in gold etchant, which is a mixed solution of I2/NH4I/C2H5OH/H2O. Therefore, we could obtain gold photopattern with the maximal resolution of the employed mask without any development process. Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article.