  Porous poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) recently have been actively serving as a
multifunctional, interdisciplinary materials platform in quite a few research
areas, including separation, catalysis, actuator, sensor, and energy storage,
just to name a few. In this context, the capability to photo-pattern PIL
microstructures in a porous state on a substrate is still missing but is a
crucial step for their real industrial usage. Here, we developed a method for
in situ rapid patterning of porous PIL microstructures via a maskless
photolithography approach coupled with a simple electrostatic complexation
treatment. This breakthrough enables designs of miniaturized sensors. As
exemplified in this work, upon loading Pt nanoparticles into porous PIL
microstructures, the hybrid sensor showed outstanding performance, bearing both
a high sensitivity and a wide detection range.
