Patterning photo-curable light-emitting organic composites by vertical and horizontal capillarity: a general route to photonic nanostructures

We demonstrate the patterning of organic light-emitting composites made by conjugated polymers and photo-curable matrices. Using blends that exhibit both the structural properties of a low-viscosity photo-curable polymer, and the emission features of conjugated light-emitting materials, we study the operational principle of the pattern transfer and the modifications induced by the imprinting and microfluidic procedures on the optical properties of the compounds investigated. The combination of high-resolution silicone and perfluoropolyether elastomeric templates and low-viscosity, light-emitting polymeric blends offers the possibility to easily produce active organic structures with 100 nm scale resolution, thus extending current nanopatterning routes to this important class of composite material.