Fabrication of Patchy Silica Microspheres with Tailor‐Made Patch Functionality using Photo‐Iniferter Reversible‐Addition‐Fragmentation Chain‐Transfer

Patchy ParticlesIn article number 2301761, Alexander Böker, Matthias Hartlieb, Martin Reifarth, and co‐workers provide a modified microcontact printing (μCP) routine, which they use to introduce highly functional patches on silicon dioxide (SiO2) microspheres. The μCP method uses a polymer brush‐functionalized elastomeric stamp, whose surface features have been optimized to print amino‐functional moieties to oxide surfaces in a locally precise fashion. The introduced patch functions are used for further functionalization, as different acrylic acid‐derived polymer materials are grafted from the patch site using photo‐iniferter reversible addition‐fragmentation chain‐transfer (PI‐RAFT) polymerization.