Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 25: Interfaces and Thin Films II

CPP 25.1: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 13, 2018, 09:30–10:00, PC 203

Understanding self-assembly in gyroid terpolymer films — •Ilja Gunkel — Adolphe Merkle Insitute, Fribourg, Switzerland

Block copolymer (BCP) self-assembly is an effective tool for generating various nanostructured morphologies. Over the past decades, tremendous progress has been made in both understanding and controlling the self-assembly of BCP thin films. However, this has been mostly seen in diblocks, the simplest BCP architecture, enabling the generation of well-ordered two-dimensional patterns with applications, for example, as nanolithography masks. Simply extending a diblock by a third chemically distinct block, thereby creating a so-called triblock terpolymer, provides access to more complex morphologies, e.g. the gyroid. The unique geometry of the gyroid - a bicontinuous and triply periodic cubic morphology with inherent chirality - holds promise for enabling new applications like optical metamaterials. Creating the desired functionality in these plasmonic materials requires precise structural control of the polymer template used for their fabrication. However, this level of control and detailed understanding of triblock terpolymer self-assembly have yet to be achieved. In this talk, I will present recent results showing that gyroid terpolymer films with long-range order can be generated by controlled solvent vapor annealing. I will further show that terpolymer self-assembly in films during annealing can be tracked by in situ grazing-incidence small-angle x-ray scattering (GISAXS). These experiments provide detailed structural information, which is key to generating well-ordered gyroid terpolymer films that can serve as templates for the fabrication of optical metamaterials.