Mesoscopic simulation of the surface inducing effects on the compatibility of PS‐b‐PMMA copolymers

Abstract

The phase morphologies of designed polystyrene‐block‐poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS‐b‐PMMA) copolymers were studied at 383, 413, and 443 K by mesoscopic simulations. Eighteen patterned surfaces of four series were designed and designated as “ci,” “co,” “gra,” and “rg” to study their influence on changing the microscopic phase morphology of copolymers. The topography of the “ci” series surfaces was shaped by semicircular balls. Different radii were applied to simulate different degrees of surface roughness. The “co” series were composed of cubic columns as the mask, and the cubic columns were separated by equal spaces. Various sizes and heights of columns were used to simulate different degrees of surface roughness. The “gra” series were composed of surfaces with different areas of section and the same height to simulate different degrees of surface roughness. The “rg” series were composed of concentric cuboids with continuous increasing heights and sizes. The degree of phase separation depended on the structures of copolymers, the topography of surfaces and the simulation temperatures. When the triblock copolymer with surfaces induced was composed of the same component at both ends and had larger PS segment percentage, it would present higher values of order parameter, that was, “ABA” showed the highest, “AB” the second high and “BAB” the last, the values of order parameter of the long chains were higher than those of the short ones, except the situation with co‐4432 and co‐8832 surfaces induced. However, the co‐4432 and co‐8832 surfaces performed the most intensive extent of inducing effect. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012

Solvent Effect on the Self-Assembly of a Thin Film Consisting of Y-Shaped Copolymer

“…Among a large variety of copolymers, amphiphilic copolymers composed of hydrophilic and hydrophobic components are promising and useful candidates in a rich variety of applications, such as chiral separation membranes [ 25 ], drug release systems [ 26 ], antifouling coatings [ 27 ], gas and biosensors [ 28 ], and activating carriers for biocatalysts [ 29 ]. To advance the properties or to meet the requirements of device functionality, the aggregating structure or orientation at the mesoscopic scale are controlled by methodologies including the introduction of thermal annealing [ 30 ], external fields [ 31 , 32 ], solvent annealing [ 33 ], shear [ 34 , 35 ] and patterned substrates [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ].…”

One-dimensional Confinement Effect on the Self-assembly of Symmetric H-shaped Copolymers in a Thin Film

“…A wide range of high-performance and functional block copolymer materials have been applied for use in electronics 3 , photonics 4 , biomaterials 5 and so on. To improve the material properties or to achieve the required device functionality, some methodologies have been utilized to control the orientation of block copolymer materials, including the introduction of external fields 6 , 7 , shear 8 , 9 , solvent annealing 10 , solvent 11 , 12 , thermal annealing 13 , and patterned substrates 14 – 26 . Among these approaches, spatial confinement provides a powerful and efficient method for the fabrication of ordered morphologies, which inspired us to explore the effect and mechanism of confinements with different acting distances and influencing areas on the self-assembly structure.…”