Water-assisted formation of honeycomb structured porous films

Honeycomb structured porous materials were formed using four different casting variations of the water droplet templating method. The film quality of the materials generated from these casting techniques (airflow, cold stage, casting on water, and emulsion methods) was investigated by altering the polymer architecture and composition. Linear, star, and comb polystyrene as well as an amphiphilic diblock copolymer comprised of polystyrene-block-poly(dimethylacrylamide) (PS-b-PDMA) were previously synthesized and cast into films via these techniques. While irregular pore distributions were observed for linear polystyrene films generated by every technique screened, increasing the architectural complexity of the polymer yielded more regular films for a broad range of casting conditions for each of the techniques. With the exception of linear polystyrene, the airflow casting technique was shown to be the only technique capable of generating regular porous films for all of the polymeric materials.