Block copolymers (BCPs) composed of two or more thermodynamically incompatible homopolymers self-assemble into periodic microdomains. Exposing self-assembled BCPs with solvents selective to one block causes a swelling of the domains composed of this block. Strong swelling in the confinement imposed by the matrix of the other glassy block leads to well-defined porous structures via morphology reconstruction. This confined swelling-induced pore-making process has emerged recently as a new strategy to produce porous materials due to synergic advantages that include extreme simplicity, high pore regularity, involvement of no chemical reactions, no weight loss, reversibility of the pore forming process, etc. The mechanism, kinetics, morphology, and governing parameters of the confined swelling-induced pore-making process in BCP thin films are discussed, and the main applications of nanoporous thin films in the fields of template synthesis, surface patterning, and guidance for the areal arrangements of nanomaterials and biomolecules are summarized. Recent, promising results of extending this mechanism to produce BCP nanofibers or nanotubes and bulk materials with well-defined porosity, which makes this strategy also attractive to researchers outside the nanocommunity, are also presented.

Nondestructive preparation of bicontinuous nanoporous metal membranes by replication of bicontinuous nanoporous polymeric membranes consisting of recoverable asymmetric block copolymers (BCPs) is reported. The BCP membranes are generated by swelling the minority domains of the BCP with selective solvents accompanied by reconstruction of the glassy matrix formed by the majority component (see figure).

We reported the deliberate control on the micelle opening and closing of amphiphilic polystyrene-block-poly(2-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P2VP) micellar films by exposing them to selective solvents. We first treated the micellar films with polar solvents including ethanol and water (pH = 4, 8, and 12) that have different affinities to P2VP. We observed opening of the micelles in all the cases. Both the size of opened pores and the opening rate are dependent on the solvency of different solvents for P2VP. We then explored the closing behavior of the opened micelles using solvents having different affinities to PS. We found that the opened micelles were recovered to their initial closed micelle forms. The recovery was accompanied by a slow micelle disassociation process which gradually reduced the micelle size. The rates of the micelle closing and disassociation are also dependent on the solvency of different solvents for PS.

Mesoporous metal oxide networks composed of interconnected nanotubes with ultrathin tube walls down to 3 nm and high porosity up to 90% were fabricated by atomic layer deposition (ALD) of alumina or titania onto templates of swelling-induced porous block copolymers. The nanotube networks possessed dual sets of interconnected pores separated by the tube wall whose thickness could be finely tuned by altering ALD cycles. Because of the excellent pore interconnectivity and high porosity, the alumina nanotube networks showed superior humidity-sensing performances.

The growing availability of Internet access has led to significant increase in the use of World Wide Web. If we are to design dependable Web-based systems that deal effectively with the increasing number of clients and highly variable workload, it is important to be able to describe the Web workload and errors accurately. In this paper we focus on the detailed empirical analysis of the sessionbased workload and reliability based on the data extracted from actual Web logs of eleven Web servers. First, we introduce and rigourously analyze several intrasession and inter-session metrics that collectively describe Web workload in terms of user sessions. Then, we analyze Web error characteristics and estimate the requestbased and session-based reliability of Web servers. Finally, we identify the invariants of the Web workload and reliability that apply through all data sets considered. The results presented in this paper show that session-based workload and reliability are better indicators of the users perception of the Web quality than the requestbased metrics.

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