Very thin film materials have emerged as a highly interesting and useful quasi 2D-state functionality. They have given rise to numerous applications ranging from protective and smart coatings to electronics, sensors and display technology as well as serving biological, analytical and medical purposes. The tailoring of polymer film properties and functions has become a major research field. As opposed to the traditional treatise on polymer and resin-based coatings, this one-stop reference is the first to give readers a comprehensive view of the latest macromolecular and supramolecular film-based nanotechnology. Bringing together all the important facets and state-of-the-art research, the two well-structured volumes cover film assembly and depostion, functionality and patterning, and analysis and characterization. The result is an in-depth understanding of the phenomena, ordering, scale effects, fabrication, and analysis of polymer ultrathin films. This book will be a valuable addition for Materials Scientists, Polymer Chemists, Surface Scientists, Bioengineers, Coatings Specialists, Chemical Engineers, and Scientists working in this important research field and industry.
About the Author
Wolfgang Knoll is scientific executive director of the newly founded Austrian Institute of Technology. Previously, he was one of the Directors at the MPI for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. A biophysicist by training, he spent time at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California before his habilitation at the Technical University of Munich in 1986. From 1991 to 1999, he was Head of Laboratory for Exotic Nanomaterials hosted by the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) in Wako, Japan. In 1992, he was also appointed Consulting Professor at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, California. He is the 2003 recipient of the Eugen and Inge Seibold Award of the German Science Foundation, receivedthe 2008 Exner Medal of the Austrian Trade Association and was elected in 2010 as a regular member to the Austrian Academy of Sciences. . His current research interests include in particular structure-property relationships of polymeric and other organic systems in thin films and at functionalized surfaces.
Rigoberto Advincula is Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Houston, Texas. He obtained his chemistry degrees from the University of Florida (Ph.D.) and the University of the Philippines (B.S.). He has published some 380 papers, including 155 peer-reviewed publications, 11 patents (and pending), and has co-edited the book on Polymer Brushes (Wiley-VCH 2005). He currently serves as Editor of Reactive and Functional Polymers and is on the Editorial Boards of Chemistry of Materials, ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces, Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics, Macromolecular Rapid Communications, Macromolecular Research, Journal of Bioactive and Compatible Polymers, and Polymer for Advance Technologies journals. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and also a Fellow of both the Polymer Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE) and the Polymer Chemistry Divisions of the ACS.
