Dewetting in immiscible polymer bilayer films

Abstract

We have measured in situ the progression of dewetting from a large number of holes in immiscible polymer bilayer films. Using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) in grazing incidence we probe independently the evolving dewetting process both at the top surface and the buried interface of the bilayer. At an early stage, differences in the evolution of the velocities measured by XPCS between the surface and buried interface indicate that the holes do not penetrate the bottom layer. The rim velocity at late stages decays according to a wave-vector-dependent power law, which indicates inhomogeneous flows in the film. The changes in the static scattering show that observed slow-down of the dewetting velocity is correlated with the changing roughness at the buried interface of the polymer bilayer.