Dewetting behavior of self-assembled films of polystyrene-b-poly(methyl methacrylate) induced by solvent vapor annealing

Abstract

We once studied the dewetting behaviors of spin-coated and Langmuir−Blodgett (LB) films of polystyrene-b-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA) induced by solvent vapor annealing (SVA), and revealed the different contact degrees between hydrophilic PMMA blocks and the substrate in the above two kinds of films. In this work, the dewetting behavior of self-assembled films of PS-b-PMMA induced by SVA was studied for the first time. Effects of copolymer composition, solution concentration, and SVA time were systematically considered. With the increase of SVA time, continuous flat self-assembled films undergo complicated progresses including the formation of bicontinuous or holed structures, the formation of droplets, and the periodic increase and decrease of droplet sizes. The periodic evolutions of droplet sizes in the self-assembled films are similar to those in our previous LB films but different from their single evolutions in the spin-coated films. It indicates that the former two kinds of films have good contact degrees between PMMA blocks and the substrate. Furthermore, the contact degrees in the self-assembled films are better than those in the LB films. In our current minds, the contact degrees are mainly related to the length of hydrophilic blocks and their parallel/vertical segment ratio to the substrate.