R. Hillebrand, S. Grimm, R. Giesa, H.-W. Schmidt, K. Mathwig, U. Gösele and M. Steinhart
Polymer microrod arrays prepared by non-destructive molding evaluated by real space image analysis
Polymer Preprints 50 (2009) 365.
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Ensembles of aligned polymer nanorpds and microrods are promising materials for self-cleaning surfaces, bioinspired adhesive structures, tissue engineering or sensor arrays. We demonstrare the nondestructive mechanical extraction of arrays of crosslinked polyacrylate nanorods and microrods from thus recyclabe nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide and macroporous silicon templates without necking yielding or cohering. Furthermore, we have developed procedures based on real space image analysis of scanning probe microscopy images of arrays thus released to determine the number of fractured rods and to quantify the uniformity of the array properties.