Anne Attout

Controlled aniline polymerization strategies for polyaniline micro- and nano self-assembling into practical electronic devices.

Electroless polymerization of aniline on platinum is investigated for polyaniline micro- and nanostructuring into practical electronic devices. This type of reaction is adapted to estimate its usefulness in a lithographic process. For practical electronic device fabrication, electroless polymerization of aniline can be used to electrically bridge initially independent platinum electrodes. As this application requires a polyaniline bridge to form over a nonconductive material before an electrical contact is obtained, polyaniline growth using chemical oxidative reaction is investigated on substrates presenting surface-tension contrast patterns.

Bifunctional microstructured films and surfaces obtained by soft lithography from breath figure arrays

Breath figure films of polystyrene and polyalkylthiophene presenting regular patterns of 600 nm and 5 µm are used as templates to prepare negative polydimethylsiloxane stamps containing an entrapped quantity of the primary polymer. These breath figure replica are used to generate single or double layers of the entrapped conjugated polymer in the form of networks on any substrates. Besides this, polystyrene printed in this way can be used as a resist mask that allows the polymerization of aniline in a regular micrometric arrangement on a platinum electrode or to generate a regular acid/base patterning on a plain polyaniline film.

Nanowire-templated microelectrodes for high-sensitivity pH detection

A highly sensitive pH capacitive sensor has been designed by confined growth of vertically aligned nanowire arrays on interdigited microelectrodes. The active surface of the device has been functionalized with an electrochemical pH transducer (polyaniline). We easily tune the device features by combining lithographic techniques with electrochemical synthesis. The reported electrical LC resonance measurements show considerable sensitivity enhancement compared to conventional capacitive pH sensors realized with microfabricated interdigited electrodes. The sensitivity can be easily improved by changing only the thickness of the functional layer.

Femtogram‐Controlled Synthesis and Self‐Aligned Fabrication of Polyaniline Micro‐ and Nanostructures

Yet,manyoftheseapplicationsarecurrently builtatthe macroscale rather than at the nanoscale.Standard micro- and nanoscale-machining technology isless adapted to ECPs and, generally, is in its infancy formolecularmaterialscomparedtoSi-basedtechnology.Amajoreffort in progressing towards precise engineering of molecularmaterials has been thoroughly devoted to several emergingunconventional techniques. In particular, ECPs have beenpatterned via high-throughput lithography