In the last decade, the number of studies on various aspects of block copolymer assembly and their applications in microelectronics has exponentially increased. This involves a number of aspects, from synthesis of new block copolymers with high chi, chemistry and physics to enable their thin-film assembly, and technology to multiply the density of features. Some of the ongoing work in our group has focused on two of these aspects namely synthetic routes for potentially high chi block copolymers and the development of non-preferential surface chemistry to enable thin-film assembly.  We have developed a versatile chemistry for fabricating nanopatterned polymer brushes. Our approach combines neutral brush chemistry for controlling block copolymer domain orientation with inimer chemistry to grow dense periodic arrays of patterned brushes. This is a large area approach which overcomes many of the limitations of other approaches based on patterning a self-assembled monolayer of initiators by serial top-down lithographic techniques. There is also a need to develop block copolymers which have all the required characteristics for sub 10 nm patterning, such as high chi, high etch selectivity between the two blocks, right thermal characteristics, ability to self-assemble in thin-films, and efficient pattern transfer to the underlying substrate. We will present synthesis and characterization of the newer block copolymers recently developed by us to meet these challenges.

Functional block copolymer materials and their assembly at sub 10 nm length scale

247th National Meeting (2014)

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