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Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films

We present and discuss the capability of grain boundaries to induce order in block copolymer thin films between horizontally and vertically assembled block copolymer grains. The system we use as a proof of principle is a thermally annealed 23.4 nm full-pitch lamellar Polystyrene-block-polymethylmeta...

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Autores principales: Gottlieb, Steven, Fernández-Regúlez, Marta, Lorenzoni, Matteo, Evangelio, Laura, Perez-Murano, Francesc
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022512/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31947950
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10010103
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author Gottlieb, Steven
Fernández-Regúlez, Marta
Lorenzoni, Matteo
Evangelio, Laura
Perez-Murano, Francesc
author_facet Gottlieb, Steven
Fernández-Regúlez, Marta
Lorenzoni, Matteo
Evangelio, Laura
Perez-Murano, Francesc
author_sort Gottlieb, Steven
collection PubMed
description We present and discuss the capability of grain boundaries to induce order in block copolymer thin films between horizontally and vertically assembled block copolymer grains. The system we use as a proof of principle is a thermally annealed 23.4 nm full-pitch lamellar Polystyrene-block-polymethylmetacrylate (PS-b-PMMA) di-block copolymer. In this paper, grain-boundary-induced alignment is achieved by the mechanical removal of the neutral brush layer via atomic force microscopy (AFM). The concept is also confirmed by a mask-less e-beam direct writing process. An elongated grain of vertically aligned lamellae is trapped between two grains of horizontally aligned lamellae. This configuration leads to the formation of 90° twist grain boundaries. The features maintain their orientation on a characteristic length scale, which is described by the material’s correlation length ξ. As a result of an energy minimization process, the block copolymer domains in the vertically aligned grain orient perpendicularly to the grain boundary. The energy-minimizing feature is the grain boundary itself. The width of the manipulated area (e.g., the horizontally aligned grain) does not represent a critical process parameter.
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spelling pubmed-70225122020-03-09 Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films Gottlieb, Steven Fernández-Regúlez, Marta Lorenzoni, Matteo Evangelio, Laura Perez-Murano, Francesc Nanomaterials (Basel) Article We present and discuss the capability of grain boundaries to induce order in block copolymer thin films between horizontally and vertically assembled block copolymer grains. The system we use as a proof of principle is a thermally annealed 23.4 nm full-pitch lamellar Polystyrene-block-polymethylmetacrylate (PS-b-PMMA) di-block copolymer. In this paper, grain-boundary-induced alignment is achieved by the mechanical removal of the neutral brush layer via atomic force microscopy (AFM). The concept is also confirmed by a mask-less e-beam direct writing process. An elongated grain of vertically aligned lamellae is trapped between two grains of horizontally aligned lamellae. This configuration leads to the formation of 90° twist grain boundaries. The features maintain their orientation on a characteristic length scale, which is described by the material’s correlation length ξ. As a result of an energy minimization process, the block copolymer domains in the vertically aligned grain orient perpendicularly to the grain boundary. The energy-minimizing feature is the grain boundary itself. The width of the manipulated area (e.g., the horizontally aligned grain) does not represent a critical process parameter. MDPI 2020-01-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7022512/ /pubmed/31947950 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10010103 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Gottlieb, Steven
Fernández-Regúlez, Marta
Lorenzoni, Matteo
Evangelio, Laura
Perez-Murano, Francesc
Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films
title Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films
title_full Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films
title_fullStr Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films
title_full_unstemmed Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films
title_short Grain-Boundary-Induced Alignment of Block Copolymer Thin Films
title_sort grain-boundary-induced alignment of block copolymer thin films
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022512/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31947950
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10010103
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