Surface‐Initiated Polymerization on Nanopatterns Fabricated by Electron‐Beam Lithography

Micro- and nanopatterns of polymer brushes (see Figure) are fabricated using a “top–down/bottom–up” approach. A silicon surface is patterned with gold using lift-off electron-beam lithography (“top–down”), and the resulting pattern is then amplified by surface-initiated atom-transfer radical polymerization (“bottom–up”) of N-isopropylacrylamide from an immobilized thiol initiator.