Intradomain Textures in Block Copolymers: Multizone Alignment and Biaxiality

Prasad, Ishan; Seo, Youngmi; Hall, Lisa M.; Grason, Gregory M.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.247801

Title: Intradomain Textures in Block Copolymers: Multizone Alignment and Biaxiality

Journal Article · Mon Jun 12 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.247801· OSTI ID:1536518

Prasad, Ishan ^[1]; Seo, Youngmi ^[2]; Hall, Lisa M. ^[2]; Grason, Gregory M. ^[3]

Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States). William G. Lowrie Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States). Dept. of Polymer Science and Engineering

Block copolymer (BCP) melt assembly has been studied for decades, focusing largely on self-organized spatial patterns of periodically ordered segment density. Here, we demonstrate that underlying the well-known composition profiles (i.e., ordered lamella, cylinders, spheres, and networks) are generic and heterogeneous patterns of segment orientation that couple strongly to morphology, even in the absence of specific factors that promote intra or interchain segment alignment. We employ both self-consistent field theory and coarse-grained simulation methods to measure polar and nematic order parameters of segments in a freely jointed chain model of diblock melts. We show that BCP morphologies have a multizone texture, with segments predominantly aligned normal and parallel to interdomain interfaces in the respective brush and interfacial regions of the microdomain. Further, morphologies with anisotropically curved interfaces (i.e., cylinders and networks) exhibit biaxial order that is aligned to the principal curvature axes of the interface.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0014549

OSTI ID:: 1536518

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1363721

Journal Information:: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 24; ISSN 0031-9007

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 15 works

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Intradomain phase transitions in flexible block copolymers with self-aligning segments Burke, Christopher J.; Grason, Gregory M. The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 148, Issue 17 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5025809	journal	May 2018
Theoretical prediction of an isotropic to nematic phase transition in bottlebrush homopolymer melts Panagiotou, Eleni; Delaney, Kris T.; Fredrickson, Glenn H. The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 151, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5114698	journal	September 2019
Stable Frank–Kasper phases of self-assembled, soft matter spheres Reddy, Abhiram; Buckley, Michael B.; Arora, Akash Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 115, Issue 41 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809655115	journal	September 2018
Generalizing the effects of chirality on block copolymer assembly Wang, Hsiao-Fang; Yang, Kai-Chieh; Hsu, Wen-Chun Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 116, Issue 10 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812356116	journal	February 2019
Intradomain phase transitions in flexible block copolymers with self-aligning segments Burke, Christopher J.; Grason, Gregory M. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1802.04831	text	January 2018
Stable Frank-Kasper phases of self-assembled, soft matter spheres Reddy, Abhiram; Buckley, Michael B.; Arora, Akash arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1806.01726	text	January 2018

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