Engineering the Microfabrication of Layer-by-Layer Thin Films

Layer-by-layer assembly is a simple, yet elegant method for creating a variety of thin-film architectures on surfaces. Many proposed applications for layer-by-layer thin films, such as electro-optical devices or sensors, require the films to be patterned to form micrometer-scale features, and mechanization of this process is a prerequisite. Here the use of a modified commercial slide stainer for the layer-by-layer adsorption process is discussed. Reproducible, uniform patterns over square-centimeter-range surface areas are achieved and the number of layers that may be selectively adsorbed is extended using this approach.