Regular Article

Formation of polymer-based nanoparticles and nanocomposites by plasma-assisted deposition methods^★

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Leibnizstraße 15, 24098 Kiel, Germany
² Institut für Materialwissenschaft, Lehrstuhl für Materialverbunde, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kaiserstraße 2, 24143 Kiel, Germany

^a e-mail: jschaefer@inp-greifswald.de

Received: 21 June 2017
Received in final form: 13 December 2017
Published online: 25 May 2018

Abstract

During the last decades, metal-polymer nanocomposites have been subject to extensive research as their electrical, magnetic and optical properties are very sensitive to their specific compositions and morphological structures. Although there exist a variety of standardized and well-established production processes based on plasma-assisted physical vapor deposition methods, significant progress in the understanding of the self-organized formation process has only been achieved with the help of computer simulations. In particular, computational approaches based on kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations turned out to be successful in recent years because they offer the potential to simulate and predict the system behavior on sufficiently long time scales. In this paper, we review several formation processes of metal-polymer systems that have been investigated in joint experimental and theoretical KMC and MD studies. These comprise the growth of metallic nanocolumns in a polymer matrix and the growth of nanogranular structures on a polymer film.