Nanopatterned Hydrogels as Model Materials to Study the Deformation Behavior of Polymer Nanostructures

摘要

Hydrogels, which belong to the class of environmentally sensitive polymers, are used as mechanical flow valves or actuators in micro- and nanofluidic devices due to their ability to change their size and shape in response to a change in their ambient conditions. Whereas conventional photolithography and photopolymerization based approaches limit the patterning resolution of hydrogels to about a micron, our recently established direct-write electron-beam lithography enables patterning resolution to less than 100 nm. The change in size of such nanopatterned hydrogels, in response to an external stimulus, thus allows us to directly study the effects of confinement on the reliability of polymer nanostructures under mechanical stress.