Vapor-based polymers: from films to nanostructures

While the traditional and popular realm of polymer synthesis is the liquid phase, the use of vapor-based techniques to deposit polymers has been met with increasing interest over the past decades. The perhaps most relevant example, the deposition of poly(p-xylylenes) via the Gorham process, has been of industrial use in the fabrication of isolating or protective coatings in electronics and biomaterials for many years [1,2]. More recently, vapor deposition polymerization has been extended to a broad variety of reactive polymers [3], additionally using techniques such as plasma-, initiated-, or oxidative chemical vapor deposition polymerization [4,5]. The reason for the ongoing interest in this research field is that, analogue to the deposition of inorganic coatings by chemical vapor deposition, the deposition of polymer coatings from the vapor phase has many advantages over traditional, wet chemistry methods. These advantages result in a variety of benefits for vapor-based polymer coatings and their broad utility.