Water transferable, customizable highly ordered honeycomb film from polystyrene foam waste for complex surface patterning in confined space

Abstract

AbstractThe disposal of plastic foam, mostly composed of polystyrene, poses significant environmental challenges due to its high popularity, slow degradation, and low cost. To address this problem, recycling polystyrene foam waste (PF) has emerged as a promising solution to reduce plastic pollution. This paper presents a novel approach to mass‐produce highly ordered, porous honeycomb‐patterned film (hc‐film) using wasted PF as the raw material. The hc‐film is produced using an improved phase separation (IPS) method that utilizes methanol as a suitable pore inducer and template droplet stabilizer. Methanol provides the hc‐film with customizable features such as pore ordering, size, and separation. The freestanding hc‐film, achieved by adopting a water‐soluble polystyrene sulfonate as a scarified layer, can be transferred and utilized as a flexible mold to pattern various solid substrates with complicated surface morphologies using the pre‐impregnated technique. This study demonstrates the potential of this cost‐effective and efficient approach for various applications, such as super/anti‐wetting surfaces, microelectronics, optical devices, sensors, and nanogenerators.