Effect of Cu⁺² Doping on the Nano-Scale Surface Roughness of Polyacrylamide Thin Replicas

High sensitive non-contact tapping mode atomic force microscopy has been used to study the effect of Cu+2 doping on the nano-scale surface roughness of polyacrylamide replicas. The study was carried out by determining the root mean square roughness of the polymer surface as a function of doping concentration on glass substrates. Results show that doping with Cu+2 leads to the formation of multi-scale features that increase in size and number with the doping concentration, which results in increasing the surface roughness.