Effect of thickness on the physical, thermal and chemical properties of ultra-thin polymer films

Abstract

Polymer ultra-thin films, defined as films <100nm, have recently gained scientific and technological interest. This is due to the many technological applications using such films. It is now known that the properties of materials in the nanometer scale deviate significantly from their bulk phase. With the move towards nanotechnology and smaller devices, there is a need to understand the properties of ultra-thin polymer films that are widely used in the industries today.In this thesis, we investigated the thickness dependence on the thermal, physical and chemical properties of ultra-thin films of 3 selected polymers. Our results show that there is a deviation of properties from the bulk.