Polymer thin films are required for a variety of applications in such diverse areas as biomedical engineering, chemical sensing, and organic electronics. Organic electronics are extremely attractive, among other reasons, because they are much lighter than conventional electronics, and require less power and as such represent next generation possibilities. The technique that will be used to deposit films in this study uses high power infrared lasers that efficiently vaporize polymers and will enable unique studies in fields such as organic electronics that are difficult or impossible by other means. For example, many polymers of interest suffer from poor solubility and therefore are difficult to process, while the method in this proposal does not require polymers to be soluble. In this case, the laser material-interaction requires further understanding in order to understand the mechanism of favorable volatilization, and the value of these studies is of general scientific interest.
Thin film processing of polymers presents many challenges. The novel approach here uses an infrared laser that is tuned to a vibrational mode in the polymer starting material. This provides a means to efficiently vaporize polymers without chemical alteration and a minimum of bond breaking, and is similar to the established technique of pulsed laser deposition, except that a UV laser is not used because of the intense photochemical interactions of UV photons with organics. We are guided by promising preliminary results, having observed that the efficiency of the process and even the physicochemical properties of the deposited films can depend on the particular vibrational mode that is excited by the laser. Such mode specific behavior with lasers has long been sought. The multidisciplinary nature of these studies naturally facilitates the participation of a wide group of students. Secondary students in Project SEED who are already participating in summer research at Seton Hall will tangentially benefit. Students from the biology, chemistry, and physics department at Seton Hall will be presented with research opportunities that will teach students to cooperate across disciplinary lines and to effectively communicate with each other. Finally, there is an established collaboration in this area of research between Seton Hall University (an RUI institution), Vanderbilt University, and the Naval Research Laboratory, which will present unique opportunities and benefits to all involved.
