Fabrication of ordered honeycomb porous polyvinyl chloride (PVC) films by breath figures method

In this research, the ordered honeycomb-patterned polyvinyl chloride (PVC) porous films were first fabricated with hydrophilic tetrahydrofurane (THF) as a solvent by the “Breath figures” (BFs) method. The effects of polymer concentration, polymerization degree of PVC, and air humidity on the formation of PVC films were investigated. The experimental results indicate that the increase of polymer concentration leads to the decrease of the hole size of the resultant films, and even makes the porous structure disappear. Besides, the porous films can be easily fabricated with higher polymerization degree of PVC at 40   mg   mL −1 . Increasing air humidity is advantageous to form well-ordered porous PVC films with larger hole size.