Reconfigurable Antireflection Coatings Enabled by PDMS Oligomer Infusion in Templated Nanoporous Polymer Films.

The diffusion of uncured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) oligomers out of bulk PDMS elastomers is usually detrimental to many biomedical and microfluidic applications due to the inevitable contamination of the contacting fluids and substrates. Here, we transform this detrimental process into an enabling technology for achieving novel reconfigurable antireflection (AR) coatings, which are of great technological importance in the development of new nano-optical and optoelectronic applications. Self-assembled monolayer silica colloidal crystals are first used as sacrificial templates in fabricating nanoporous polymer AR coatings.