Abstract
Honeycomb films with various building units, showing potential applications in biological, medical, physicochemical, photoelectric, and many other areas, could be prepared by the breath figure method. The ordered hexagonal structures formed by the breath figure process are related to the building units, solvents, substrates, temperature, humidity, air flow, and other factors. Therefore, by adjusting these factors, the honeycomb structures could be tuned properly. In this review, we summarized the development of the breath figure method of fabricating honeycomb films and the factors of adjusting honeycomb structures. The organic-inorganic hybrid was taken as the example building unit to discuss the preparation, mechanism, properties, and applications of the honeycomb films.
Highlights
IntroductionMembranes play an important role in science and technology, such as the applications of ion exchange membranes in separation [1,2,3], wastewater treatment [2,3,4], food, and bio-technology [3,4]; nanoporous membranes in blood purification [5], separation and gas removal [6,7], virus filtration [8]
Since François found that star polymer and block copolymer could form honeycomb films in 1994, more and more materials have been explored in this area, including the hyper-branched polymers [52,54,66], the terminated linear polymers [35,47,52], and the normal linear polymers without a special terminal group [67,68], the amphiphilic polyion complexes [51], the organic-inorganic hybrids [64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81], and so on
In 2006, Kim et al obtained the transition from monolayer to bilayer honeycomb films still using the cellulose acetate butyrate (CAB)/THF solution but with decreasing polymer concentration, which was explained by the solvent evaporation speed and the interfacial energy between water droplets and the solvent [82]
Summary
Membranes play an important role in science and technology, such as the applications of ion exchange membranes in separation [1,2,3], wastewater treatment [2,3,4], food, and bio-technology [3,4]; nanoporous membranes in blood purification [5], separation and gas removal [6,7], virus filtration [8]. Membranes 2015, 5 culture [17,18], protein adsorption [19], tissue engineering [20], lab-on-fiber technology [21], electrowetting display [22], and water/oil separation [23] To prepare these functional membranes, self-assembly has been widely employed, such as in the examples of the solution casting technology for the preparation of the ion exchange membrane [24]. The commonly used building units include amphiphilic copolymers, star polymers, block copolymers, polymeric polyion materials, and organic-inorganic hybrids [34,35]. These materials can dissolve in organic solvents such as carbon disulfide, chloroform, and toluene. The materials, formation mechanism, and applications of the organic-inorganic hybrid honeycomb films are discussed in the last section
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