Thin polymer films have attracted attention because of both their broad range of applications and of the fundamental questions they raise regarding the dynamic response of confined polymers. These films are unstable if the temperature is above their glass transition temperature Tg. Here, we describe freestanding thin films of centimetric dimensions made of a comb copolymer melt far from its gla...

Large-area freestanding graphene films are facilely fabricated by reducing graphene oxide films on recyclable Cu foils in H2-containing atmosphere at high temperature. Cu might act as efficient catalysts for considerably improved reduction of graphene oxide according to the SEM, EDS, XRD, XPS, Raman and TGA results. Comparing to the graphene films with ~30 μm thickness reduced without Cu substr...

Thin Films In article number 2210562, Ruijuan Xu, Kevin J. Crust, Varun Harbola, and co-workers report intrinsic size-driven scaling in lead-free antiferroelectric thin films. They demonstrate an intriguing antiferroelectric-to-ferroelectric transition upon reducing the thickness of NaNbO3 membranes. The image shows coexistence ferroelectric phases freestanding

We develop a facile, effective and filter free infiltration method to fabricate high performance, freestanding and superthin epoxy nanocomposite films with directly synthesized Sing-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) film as reinforcement skeleton. It is found that the thicknesses of the nanocomposite films can be easily controlled in the range of 0.5-3 μm by dripping target amount of acetone dilu...

SrTiO3 (STO), a room-temperature paraelectric material in bulk form, has been rich playground for emergent phenomena decades. As an emerging material, great attention paid to freestanding 2D STO thin films. Recently, the ferroelectricity unveiled strained films; however, it remains open question whether strain-free film is ferroelectric or not. Here, we report electric field-induced out-of-plan...

CMP as large surface area materials have attracted growing interest recently, due to their high variability in the incorporation of functional groups in combination with their outstanding thermal and chemical stability, and low densities. However, their insoluble nature causes problems in their processing since usually applied techniques such as spin coating are not available. Especially for me...

The fabrication of freestanding, sub-100 nm-thick, pH-responsive hydrogel membranes with controlled nano-morphology, based on modified poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) is presented. Polymer hydrogel-brush films were first synthesized by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP) and subsequently detached from silicon substrates by UV-induced photo-cleavage of a spec...

Ferromagnetic shape memory alloys are characterized by strong magneto-mechanical coupling occurring at the atomic scale causing large magnetically inducible strains at the macroscopic level. Employing combined atomic and magnetic force microscopy studies at variable temperature, we systematically explore the relation between the magnetic domain pattern and the underlying structure for as-deposi...

Abstract A method for small-scale testing and imaging of freestanding, microtomed polymer films using a push-to-pull device is presented. Central to this was the development sample preparation technique which utilized solvents at cryogenic temperatures transfer deposit delicate thin onto microfabricated devices. The focused ion beam (FIB)-milled tensile specimens enabled quantitative in situ TE...