Assembling Freestanding Conductive Polymer Tube Arrays at Liquid/Liquid Interface

Patterned tube array structures are mainly synthesized by template-assisted and substrate-initiated methods so far, which meet significant challenges in scale-up manufacturing and non-destructive transfer to desired support. Herein, freestanding tubular array of conductive polymers were successfully synthesized without using template or substrate. A “water/oil/water” triphasic reaction system was employed to control diffusion and reaction at separate “water/oil” and “oil/water” interfaces. The former controls reactant feeding rate and the latter determines reaction rate. By synergistic integration of diffusion and reaction in one reactor, freestanding tubular-arrayed conductive polymer thin films were successfully fabricated. Molecular dynamic simulation was performed to understand the reactant diffusion across the two interfaces. This “water/oil/water” triphasic method opens up a new approach to synthesize other patterned three dimensional materials by careful designing the reaction system.