Mechanical Properties of Ultrathin Liquid Crystalline Polymer Films fabricated by Chemical Vapor Deposition

Liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) coatings are attractive materials for creating smart surfaces, which offer responsive topography, reflectivity, and polarization properties. However, conventional fabrication methods for LCPs are difficult to use to achieve coatings with sub-micron thickness. We utilize initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) to fabricate ultrathin LCP films. The iCVD technique is solvent-free and can be used with a massive monomer library to fabricate a large range of LCP architectures. Here, we demonstrate how the surface energy of the substrate controls the surface alignment of LCP-iCVD films, and we quantify their mechanical properties to provide new insight into the properties of LCP as a function of film thickness.