Honeycomb microstructured silicon oxycarbide sheets from silicon-containing graft copolymer films

A silicon-containing graft copolymer, poly(dimethylsiloxane)-graft-polyacrylates, was explored as single-source precursor for the preparation of silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) with honeycomb microstructures by a novel reliable approach composed of breath figure (BF) process, plasma modification and pyrolysis. Multilayer ordered porous films prepared by a static BF process were treated by oxygen plasma at room temperature, and used as templates for in situ formation of honeycomb microstructured SiOC sheets by further pyrolysis. Plasma modification is believed to play a key role in templating the formation of patterned SiOC sheets because no special features were found when pyrolysing the unmodified films. The formed sheets possess a nanometer-thickness top layer with an average pore diameter of 1.893 μm.