Surface and Site‐Specific Ring‐Opening Metathesis Polymerization Initiated by Dip‐Pen Nanolithography

Arrays of nanoscale polymer brushes have been synthesized on both metallic and insulating substrates by a combination of dip-pen nanolithography and surface-initiated ring-opening metathesis polymerization (see atomic force microscopy image). This approach provides control over patterned polymer feature size, brush length, and composition. The technique points towards a way of rapidly making combinatorial libraries of functional polymer nanostructures.