UP - logo
E-viri
Celotno besedilo
Recenzirano
  • Ordering poly(trimethylsily...
    Cushen, Julia D.; Wan, Lei; Pandav, Gunja; Mitra, Indranil; Stein, Gila E.; Ganesan, Venkat; Ruiz, Ricardo; Grant Willson, C.; Ellison, Christopher J.

    Journal of polymer science. Part B, Polymer physics, 1 January 2014, Letnik: 52, Številka: 1
    Journal Article

    ABSTRACT Controlling the morphology, domain orientation, and domain size of block copolymer (BCP) thin films is desirable for many applications in nanotechnology. These properties can be tuned during solvent annealing by varying the solvent choice and degree of swelling which affect the effective miscibility and volume fraction of the BCP domains. In this work, we demonstrate with a bulk lamellae‐forming BCP, poly(4‐trimethylsilylstyrene‐block‐D,L‐lactide) (PTMSS‐b‐PLA), that varying the composition of a mixture of solvent vapors containing cyclohexane (PTMSS‐selective) and acetone (PLA‐selective), enables formation of perpendicularly oriented lamellae with sub‐20‐nm pitch lines. The BCP domain periodicity was also observed to increase by 30%, compared to bulk, following solvent annealing. Furthermore, solvent annealing alone is shown to induce a transition from a disordered to an ordered BCP. We rationalize our observations by hypothesizing that the use of a combination of domain selective solvent mixtures serves to increase the effective repulsion between the blocks of the copolymer. We furnish results from self‐consistent field theory calculations to support the proposed mechanism. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci. Part B: Polym. Phys. 2014, 52, 36–45 Solvent annealing is used to impart mobility and perpendicular orientation of block copolymer domains, a critical step in making usable high‐resolution features for many nanotechnology applications. In this work, solvent annealing using a mixture of two domain‐selective solvents increases the domain periodicity of a lamellae‐forming sample by 30% and orders a cylindrical morphology for an ordinarily disordered pure sample. Both are attributed to a decrease in effective block miscibility under the solvent annealing conditions presented.