I have a nanoparticle that can be functionalized with amines or carboxyl groups. I would like to "print" the nanoparticle onto a flat polymer surface, only in regions that have been irradiated by a laser. Is there a combination of laser, polymer, and process that would allow me to do this?
For example, one way to bind carboxyl functionalized nanoparticles would be to crosslink it to an amine on the surface of the polymer. Is there a polymer that would expose amine groups after exposure to a laser?
If there are multiple solutions, then a simple and fast solution is preferred.
I dont know if any commercial resist products are based on
revealing amine or carboxylic acid groups - the CA resists mostly use phenols and the DNQ resist chemistry isnt what you want. You can spend some time looking over the technical literature from the resist manufacturers.
You can get t-butyl acrylate from Aldrich - you might be able to get the polymer somewhere. If you make a film from poly t-butyl acrylate with 5% added triphenylsulfonium or diphenyliodonium salt of a strong acid (we've used the triflate or AsF6), you can expose with a laser (350 nm or so), bake to deprotect, and have carboxylic groups. That is the simplest way.
Really optimal ways will require some polymer chemistry - synthesis of monomers, polymerization, etc. A masked isocyanate with your amine labels will attach your nanoparticles through urea links.
Put amines on your nanoparticles.
For the polymer use poly(tert-butyl methacrylate) or a polymer containing tert-butyl methacrylate as a comonomer (e.g. polystyrene-co-tertbutyl methacrylate). Co-cast it with a photoacid generator (PAG). After photexposure, bake the polymer film to deprotect the tert-butyl groups from the polymer, leaving behind carboxylic acid selectively where you had photoexposed with the laser. This chemistry is called "chemically amplified resist" and is used to make every modern computer chip.
see this open article for a starting point:
doi.org/10.2494/photopolymer.28.67
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