Breath-figure-templated assembly of holey polymer films*

Breath figures formed on evaporating polymer solutions exposed to the blast of humid air involve growth and self-assembly of water drops that are non-coalescent. The hexagonally close packed, nearly monodisperse drops, eventually evaporate away, leaving a polymer film with ordered array of pores. We provide the first quantitative attempt aimed at the elucidation of the mechanism of this breath-figure-templated assembly. The dynamics of drop nucleation, growth, noncoalescence and self-assembly are modeled by accounting for various transport and thermodynamic processes. The theoretical framework developed in this study allows one to rationalize and predict the structure and size of pores formed in different polymer-solvent systems under given airflow conditions.