Making inert polypropylene fibers chemically responsive by combining atomic layer deposition and vapor phase chemical grafting.

Uniformly grafting organic reactive molecular species, e.g. -NH₂, onto substrates that have three-dimensional complex structures and are chemically inert is challenging. The vapor phase chemical grafting of organic molecules enabled by low temperature metal oxide atomic layer deposition (ALD) is presented as a general and promising solution to functionalize inert matrices with complex morphology, such as nonwoven polypropylene mats, through the controllable self-limited molecular assembly mechanism in a combined ALD and vapor phase chemical grafting process.