Nongyi Cheng

The mechanism of the reaction is oxidative polymerization. Polymer coating methods using the same mechanism include electropolymerization17 and vapor phase polymerization18. Electropolymerization requires a conductive substrate, lacks the advantage of uniform and conformal coating, and is an environmentally-unfriendly solution-based method19. The existing vapor phase polymerization method is similar to the method reported here but can only polymerize highly-volatile monomers20.

Coating textured, high surface area substrates, such as paper and textiles, with conjugated polymer films is challenging. Selected vapor deposition techniques allow for the film forming process to be largely divorced of substrate properties, such as surface energy and surface roughness, and have the potential to yield conformal coatings. However, reliable vapor deposition techniques with which to fabricate structurally-diverse conjugated polymer films do not exist.