Processing of functional polymers and organic thin films by the matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) technique

The matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) technique has been successfully used to deposit highly uniform thin films of various functional materials such as non-linear optical (NLO) organic materials, conductive polymers, luminescent organic molecules and several types of proteinaceous compounds. MAPLE is a laser evaporation technique for growing thin films of organic and polymeric materials which involves directing a pulsed laser beam (λ = 193 nm;fluence = 0.01-0.5 Jcm ^-2 ) onto a frozen target (-40 to -160°C) consisting of a solute polymeric or organic compound dissolved in a solvent matrix. Using MAPLE, thin films of N-(4-nitrophenyl)-(L)-prolinol or NPP, an NLO material; polypyrrole, a conductive polymer; and tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum or Alq3, a luminescent organic compound, have been separately deposited with minor (in the case of Alq3) or no degradation (for the NPP and polypyrrole) to their optical and electrical properties. The MAPLE process has also been used to deposit discrete thin film micro-arrays of biotinylated bovine serum albumin (BSA). The deposited BSA films, after washing with a blocking protein and fluorescently tagged streptavidin, fluoresce when exposed to UV. This fluorescence indicates that the biochemical specificity of the transferred biotinylated protein is unaffected by the MAPLE process. These results demonstrate that the MAPLE technique can be used for growing thin films of functional polymer and active biomaterials.