Interfacial self‐assembly growth of mesoporous polydopamine nanofilms for formaldehyde sensing

Abstract

AbstractMesoporous polymer nanofilms combine the advantages of the unique structure of mesopores, the quasi‐2D configuration of the films, and the inherent properties of polymers, and have become a kind of ideal candidate for the high‐performance micro‐nano devices due to their highly accessible surface area and exposed active sites. However, the facile preparation of polymer nanofilms with well‐defined mesostructures has remained a great challenge due to the lack of synthetic strategies. In this study, we developed a simple soft‐template interfacial co‐assembly strategy to in‐situ construct mesoporous polydopamine nanofilms with uniform thickness (30 nm) and regularly distributed mesopore arrays (average pore size of 12 nm) on surfaces with different types and morphologies. Furthermore, a single‐layer mesoporous polymer nanofilm was directly grown on a quartz crystal microbalance substrate and its performance for sensing formaldehyde was studied. The resulted sensor showed excellent sensing response, fast response/recovery dynamics, and great stability, presenting a great promising landscape for trace detection of formaldehyde gas.