Influence of alkyl spacer in nanostructure shape control by templateless electropolymerization

Here, we control the shape of the resulting porous structures by templateless electropolymerization, by adjusting the alkyl spacer between thieno[3,4-b]thiophene and pyrene used as the monomer and the substituent, respectively. A huge change is observed from nanotubular structures (1D growth) without alkyl chain to huge hollow spheres (3D growth) for longer alkyl chains (≥ C4H8) passing through ribbon-like structures (2D) for short C2H4 spacer. The presence of a significant amount of water is necessary for the formation of these porous structures because it allows releasing a high amount of gas bubbles. Moreover, this change in surface structures is also observed by varying H2O content. Here, the higher hydrophobic properties with extremely high water adhesion are obtained with the presence of ribbon-like structures. This work is extremely important to investigate the effect of surface structures on surface properties for various potential applications.