Opportunities for Multiscale Pattern Modulation with Temporally Arrested Breath Figures

Fluid-mediated patterning techniques offer a promising avenue for the cost-effective and scalable fabrication of structured surfaces across multiple length scales. Widespread adoption of fluid-based approaches, however, requires an in-depth understanding of the governing mechanisms to ensure precise control over pattern formation and dynamics toward reliable and affordable design modulation. Here, we present control strategies for creating diverse surface architectures by employing condensate water droplets as dynamic microscale templates. The temporally arrested breath figure patterning technique used here provides the opportunity for macroscale pattern organization with an elevated level of structural modification. We demonstrate systematic variation over isotropic and directional anisotropic breath figure micropatterns, leveraging control over the governing thermodynamic and photochemical phase change processes. Finely-tuned pattern formation is achieved in an order of minutes, creating breath figures of droplets ranging in size from hundreds of nanometers to tens of microns. Potential modulated surface architectures include organized macroscale spatial arrangements of breath figure pores, through-pore perforated membranes of discrete sizes, and elastomeric replication to transform the re-entrant cavity designs into protruding spherical caps. This adapted breath figure patterning technique thus provides a fast, scalable, and low-cost method for fabricating tunable surface morphologies tailored for future functionality.