(Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China)
Metal deposition plays a critical role in the fabrication of functional materials and devices. Conventional metal deposition techniques have significant limits on their compatibility with materials and required working conditions, which cannot satisfy the demands of modern manufacturing. Polymer assisted metal deposition takes advantage of the unique physical and chemical properties of polymers to modulate metal deposition, which features mild working conditions, great compatibility with various materials, as well as the ability to tune products composition and structure. Base on this approach, researchers have obtained a number of functional metallic units and metal-polymer composites, which lead tremendous achievements in the field of wearable soft electronics, energy conversion and storage devices, and electrical sensors. The present work contains a detailed review on the above work and elucidates the physical/chemical mechanism of polymer mediated metal deposition. Examples on representative polymer assisted metal deposition approaches and their applications are introduced. A perspective is provided at the end of this review on the potential developments of this field in the near future.