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Science 6 April 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5514, pp. 79 - 83
DOI: 10.1126/science.1057887
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Reports

Three-Dimensionally Ordered Array of Air Bubbles in a Polymer Film

Mohan Srinivasarao,1* David Collings,2 Alan Philips,3dagger Sanjay Patel

We report the formation of a three-dimensionally ordered array of air bubbles of monodisperse pore size in a polymer film through a templating mechanism based on thermocapillary convection. Dilute solutions of a simple, coil-like polymer in a volatile solvent are cast on a glass slide in the presence of moist air flowing across the surface. Evaporative cooling and the generation of an ordered array of breath figures leads to the formation of multilayers of hexagonally packed water droplets that are preserved in the final, solid polymer film as spherical air bubbles. The dimensions of these bubbles can be controlled simply by changing the velocity of the airflow across the surface. When these three-dimensionally ordered macroporous materials have pore dimensions comparable to the wavelength of visible light, they are of interest as photonic band gaps and optical stop-bands.

1 School of Textile and Fiber Engineering and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
2 Department of Botany, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
3 Department of Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA. 4Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mohan{at}tfe.gatech.edu

dagger    Present address: Department of Polymer Science, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406, USA.

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