Fabricating chemical gradients on oxide surfaces by means of fluorinated, catechol-based, self-assembled monolayers.

Catechols bind strongly to several metal oxides and can thus be used as a binding group for generating self-assembled monolayers. Furthermore, their derivatives can be used to produce well-defined, centimeter-scale surface-chemical gradients on technologically relevant surfaces, such as titanium dioxide (TiO(2)). A simple dip-and-rinse gradient-preparation technique was utilized to produce surface-hydrophobicity gradients from perfluoro-alkyl catechols and nitrodopamine (ND). Chemical composition, quality, and properties of the functionalized surfaces were determined by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry (VASE), and static water contact angle (sCA) measurements. Contact angles were found to be in the range of 30°-95°, correlating well with the determined surface chemical composition and adlayer thickness.