Terraced and 3D Pyramid-Shaped Polymer Single Crystal via Low Temperature-Assisted Microfluidic Technology.

Abstract

3D pyramidal polymer single crystals provide spatial gradient variations within the crystal molecules, and these variations facilitate the study of the relationship between structure and properties within the molecules of various complexes with anisotropic structures. As described herein, a low-temperature-assisted microfluidic pore channeling approach is proposed to prepare structurally ordered polymer single crystals. A mixture of dichloromethane and dimethyl sulfoxide is used as a prepolymer, and a liquid microfluidic technique is employed to grow the end-functionalized polymers into 3D polymer single crystals. Through the ordered growth of single crystals, a personalized pyramidal pattern with a homogeneous structure is formed. To evaluate the mesh node density, low-temperature growth time and substrate type are also investigated. Rectangular, pyramidal, and dendritic patterns are synthesized via low-temperature single crystal growth. This work shows that low temperature-assisted microfluidics provides a novel means to tune the 3D structure of polymer single crystals.