Inducing Order from Disordered Copolymers: On Demand Generation of Triblock Morphologies Including Networks

Journal Article · Thu Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Macromolecules

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/ma300365h· OSTI ID:1047902

Tureau, Maëva S.; Kuan, Wei-Fan; Rong, Lixia; Hsiao, Benjamin S.

Disordered block copolymers are generally impractical in nanopatterning applications due to their inability to self-assemble into well-defined nanostructures. However, inducing order in low molecular weight disordered systems permits the design of periodic structures with smaller characteristic sizes. Here, we have induced nanoscale phase separation from disordered triblock copolymer melts to form well-ordered lamellae, hexagonally packed cylinders, and a triply periodic gyroid network structure, using a copolymer/homopolymer blending approach, which incorporates constituent homopolymers into selective block domains. This versatile blending approach allows one to precisely target multiple nanostructures from a single disordered material and can be applied to a wide variety of triblock copolymer systems for nanotemplating and nanoscale separation applications requiring nanoscale feature sizes and/or high areal feature densities.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
• Sponsoring Organization: NSFAFR
• OSTI ID: 1047902
• Journal Information: Macromolecules, Vol. 45, Issue (11) ; 06, 2012
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: ENGLISH