Use of self-organizing materials such as block copolymers and block copolymer brushes enables the control of both surface chemical composition and spatial arrangement by careful selection of the component blocks that either crosslink or are cleavable under appropriate radiation. This report describes patterned diblock copolymer films and brushes that consist of a crosslinkable block and a radiation cleavable block. In this study, block copolymer thin films were produced by spincoating and then solvent annealed to create long-range order. By incorporating photoactive compounds in a block copolymer, it was possible to subsequently crosslink one of the blocks and photochemically remove the second block to form well aligned dot or line arrays. Chemically similar diblock brushes were grown using chemically bound ATRP initiators on silicon. We have shown that this strategy enables the formation of sub-surface nanochannels and we believe will enable the formation of nanosheets and membranes with controlled surface functionality.

Cleavable self-organized thin films: Block copolymers and brushes

243rd National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.