Thermally induced morphological transition from lamella to gyroid in a binary blend of diblock copolymers

Abstract

We report an experimental result of the thermally induced morphological transition from lamellar to gyroid phase in a binary blend of polystyrene-block-polyisoprene (SI) diblock copolymers. Two SI copolymers employed in this study have almost the same molecular weights but different volume fractions of polystyrene (PS) block (φPS=0.26 and 0.65). The blend was prepared by these two SI diblock copolymers and the overall volume fraction of PS block in the blend, φPS¯, was 0.58. Time-resolved small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) experiments were conducted to reveal morphological structures as a function of temperature from 120 to 205 °C during the heating with a rate of 2 °C/min. It was observed from SAXS results that the lamellar phase (L) was found below 164 °C, the gyroid phase (G) above 188 °C, and the coexistence of L and G phases between these temperatures. The gyroid phase was confirmed by transmission electron micrograph. The transition from L to G phase is different from a thermally induced transition of kinetically locked morphology formed by the vitrification of the PS matrix, because it was also found by a separate SAXS experiment for the specimen annealed for long times in which the lamellar phase was stable up to 140 °C, which is well above the glass transition temperature of the PS block. A temperature sweep of SAXS experiment with a smaller heating rate was a useful method to roughly estimate the transition temperature. Moreover, it was found from this experiment that the position of the first-order peak does not change remarkably upon the transition. Although the thermoreversibility of the transition between L and G phases has not yet been confirmed, it does not necessarily mean that the lamellar morphology is not stable at lower temperatures.