3D visualization of polymer nanostructure
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
Soft materials and structured polymers are extremely useful nanotechnology building blocks. Block copolymers, in particular, have served as 2D masks for nanolithography and 3D scaffolds for photonic crystals, nanoparticle fabrication, and solar cells. F or many of these applications, the precise 3 dimensional structure and the number and type of defects in the polymer is important for ultimate function. However, directly visualizing the 3D structure of a soft material from the nanometer to millimeter length scales is a significant technical challenge. Here, we propose to develop the instrumentation needed for direct 3D structure determination at near nanometer resolution throughout a nearly millimeter-cubed volume of a soft, potentially heterogeneous, material. This new capability will be a valuable research tool for LANL missions in chemistry, materials science, and nanoscience. Our approach to soft materials visualization builds upon exciting developments in super-resolution optical microscopy that have occurred over the past two years. To date, these new, truly revolutionary, imaging methods have been developed and almost exclusively used for biological applications. However, in addition to biological cells, these super-resolution imaging techniques hold extreme promise for direct visualization of many important nanostructured polymers and other heterogeneous chemical systems. Los Alamos has a unique opportunity to lead the development of these super-resolution imaging methods for problems of chemical rather than biological significance. While these optical methods are limited to systems transparent to visible wavelengths, we stress that many important functional chemicals such as polymers, glasses, sol-gels, aerogels, or colloidal assemblies meet this requirement, with specific examples including materials designed for optical communication, manipulation, or light-harvesting Our Research Goals are: (1) Develop the instrumentation necessary for imaging materials at {approx} 10 nm resolution over hundreds of microns in 3 spatial dimensions. Super-resolution microcopy methods based upon single molecule localization were originally limited to 2D slices. Recent advances in this field have extended these methods to three dimensions. However, the 3D rendering was limited to viewing sparsely labeled cellular structures over a z-depth of less than 1 micron. Our first goal is to extend super resolution microscopy to z-depths of hundreds of microns. This substantial improvement is needed to image polymer nanostructure over functionally relevant length scales. (2) Benchmark this instrument by studying the 3D nanostructure of diblock co-polymer morphologies. We will test and benchmark our instrument by imaging fluorescently labeled diblock copolymers, molecules that self-assemble into a variety of 3D nano-structures. We reiterate these polymers are useful for a variety of applications ranging from lithography to light harvesting.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 988328
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-02370; LA-UR-09-2370; TRN: US201018%%493
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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