showing 4 related works from this author
Tapered Multiblock Star Copolymers: Synthesis, Selective Hydrogenation, and Properties
2020
Two series of well-defined multiblock four-arm tapered star copolymers with “arms” of the type poly(styrene)-block-poly(isoprene-grad-styrene), (SI/S)₄, were synthesized on a multigram scale with short reaction times. Targeted molecular weight (M) values ranged from 80 to 240 kg mol–¹ with polystyrene (PS) compositions of 40 and 60 wt %. Narrowly distributed (Đ = 1.04–1.12) copolymers were obtained regardless of M and without additional purification beyond precipitation. At sufficiently high M, members of the 40 wt % PS series possessed either a cylindrical or bicontinuous morphology, whereas the 60 wt % PS series yielded lamellae. The star copolymers outperformed their corresponding linear…
Rapid Production of Internally Structured Colloids by Flash Nanoprecipitation of Block Copolymer Blends.
2018
Colloids with internally structured geometries have shown great promise in applications ranging from biosensors to optics to drug delivery, where the internal particle structure is paramount to performance. The growing demand for such nanomaterials necessitates the development of a scalable processing platform for their production. Flash nanoprecipitation (FNP), a rapid and inherently scalable colloid precipitation technology, is used to prepare internally structured colloids from blends of block copolymers and homopolymers. As revealed by a combination of experiments and simulations, colloids prepared from different molecular weight diblock copolymers adopt either an ordered lamellar morph…
Curvature as a Guiding Field for Patterns in Thin Block Copolymer Films
2018
Experimental data on thin films of cylinder-forming block copolymers (BC)—free-standing BCmembranes as well as supported BC films—strongly suggest that the local orientation of the BC patternsis coupled to the geometry in which the patterns are embedded. We analyze this phenomenon using generalsymmetry considerations and numerical self-consistent field studies of curved BC films in cylindricalgeometry. The stability of the films against curvature-induced dewetting is also analyzed. In goodagreement with experiments, we find that the BC cylinders tend to align along the direction of curvature athigh curvatures. At low curvatures, we identify a transition from perpendicular to parallel alignm…
Shear-aligned block copolymer monolayers as seeds to control the orientational order in cylinder-forming block copolymer thin films
2016
We study the dynamics of coarsening of a cylinder-forming block copolymer thin film deposited on a prepatterned substrate made of a well-ordered block copolymer monolayer. During thermal annealing the shear-aligned bottom layer drives extinction of the disclinations and promotes a strong orientational correlation, disturbed only by dislocations and undulations along the cylinders of the minority phase. The thin film bilayer system remains stable during annealing, in agreement with self-consistent field theory results that indicate that although the thickness of a stack of two monolayers is not at the optimum thickness condition, it is very close to equilibrium. Phase field simulations indic…