Metamaterials are a promising new class of materials, in which sub-wavelength physical structures, rather than variations in chemical composition, can be used to modify the nature of their interaction with electromagnetic radiation. Here we show that a metamaterials approach, using a discrete physical geometry (conformation) of the segments of a polymer chain as the vector for a substantial refractive index change, can be used to enable visible wavelength, conjugated polymer photonic elements. In particular, we demonstrate that a novel form of dip-pen nanolithography provides an effective means to pattern the so-called β-phase conformation in poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) thin films. This can be done on length scales ≤ 500 nm, as required to fabricate a variety of such elements, two of which are theoretically modelled using complex photonic dispersion calculations.
CITATION STYLE
Perevedentsev, A., Sonnefraud, Y., Belton, C. R., Sharma, S., Cass, A. E. G., Maier, S. A., … Bradley, D. D. C. (2015). Dip-pen patterning of poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) chain-conformation-based nano-photonic elements. Nature Communications, 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms6977
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