Covalent Surface Modification of Oxide Surfaces

TLDR

Surface modification via robust overlayers enables tuning of bulk substrate properties, a capability increasingly critical as optoelectronic devices shrink and surface area/volume ratios rise, affecting wettability and allowing highly specific, long‑lasting biosensing surfaces that repel all but a target entity. This review proposes covalent monolayer attachment as a strategy for robust surface modification of oxides. The method involves covalently attaching monolayers to oxide surfaces to create durable, tunable overlayers.

Abstract

The modification of surfaces by the deposition of a robust overlayer provides an excellent handle with which to tune the properties of a bulk substrate to those of interest. Such control over the surface properties becomes increasingly important with the continuing efforts at down-sizing the active components in optoelectronic devices, and the corresponding increase in the surface area/volume ratio. Relevant properties to tune include the degree to which a surface is wetted by water or oil. Analogously, for biosensing applications there is an increasing interest in so-called "romantic surfaces": surfaces that repel all biological entities, apart from one, to which it binds strongly. Such systems require both long lasting and highly specific tuning of the surface properties. This Review presents one approach to obtain robust surface modifications of the surface of oxides, namely the covalent attachment of monolayers.