Structure and Dynamics of Cylinder Forming Block Copolymers in Thin Films

Abstract

In this chapter, we present fundamental aspects of the phase behavior and ordering dynamics in thin films of compositionally asymmetric block copoly- mers. Cylinder-forming AB diblock and ABA triblock copolymers are used as model systems. In the introduction we briefly describe the physics which commonly governs block copolymer phase behavior both in bulk and in thin films; then we define characteristic features of thin film behavior with spe- cial emphasis on the parameters that are readily controlled in experiments. Along with the discussion of surface fields and confinement effects in Sect. 2, we focus on the issues that are seldom discussed in the literature such as molecular weight and molecular architecture effects on the phase behavior and on microdomain dynamics (Sect. 2), and the analysis of the characteristic microdomain dimensions (Sect. 3).We present measurements of the character- istic spacings and film thickness with sub-micron resolution and demonstrate confinement induced distortions of microdomain dimensions in thin films rela- tive to the respective parameters in bulk. In Sect. 4 we describe time-resolved details of structural ordering of cylinder microdomains which indicate that the dynamics of defect annihilation in block copolymer thin films is considerably more complex than anticipated so far.