As future technological progress necessitates the design and control of nanoscale devices, new methods for the facile creation of smaller features must be discovered. Block copolymers, one sub-class of soft material, provide the opportunity to design materials with attractive chemical and mechanical properties because of their ability to assemble into periodic structures with nanoscale domain spacings. To employ block copolymers in many applications, it is essential to understand how interfacial energetics influence copolymer morphologies.  One area of recent progress in our group involves probing the effects of interfacial composition on block copolymer self-assembly using tapered interfaces.  In this endeavor, we are manipulating the interfacial region between blocks to control ordering transitions in tapered block copolymers.  Our normal and inverse tapered diblocks show measurable decreases in the order-disorder transition temperature relative to the corresponding non-tapered diblocks.  Additionally we have recently found the double-gyroid network morphology in several tapered diblock copolymers.

Manipulating the interfacial regions of self-assembled block copolymer structures

241st National Meeting (2011)

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