Diblock copolymer ordering induced by patterned surfaces

Abstract

We use a Ginzburg-Landau free energy functional to investigate diblock copolymer morphologies when the copolymer melt interacts with one surface or is confined between two chemically patterned surfaces. For temperatures above the order-disorder transition a complete linear response description of the copolymer melt is given, in terms of an arbitrary two-dimensional surface pattern. The appearance of order in the direction parallel to the surface is found as a result of the order in the perpendicular direction. Below the order-disorder point and in a thin-film geometry, our procedure enables the analytic calculation of distorted perpendicular and tilted lamellar phases in the presence of uniform or modulated surface fields.

8 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (6)

• Symmetric Diblock Copolymers in Thin Films (I): Phase stability in Self-Consistent Field Calculations and Monte Carlo Simulations
• Interfaces of Modulated Phases
• Defects in Lamellar Diblock Copolymers: Chevron- and Omega-shaped Tilt Boundaries
• The Lamellar-Disorder Interface : One-Dimensional Modulated Profiles
• Interfaces and Grain Boundaries of Lamellar Phases
• Novel surface state in a class of incommensurate system

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Phase-field-crystal models for condensed matter dynamics on atomic length and diffusive time scales: an overview
• Thin Film Diblock Copolymers in Electric Field: Transition from Perpendicular to Parallel Lamellae
• Structural changes in block copolymers: coupling of electric field and mobile ions
• Surface induced ordering in thin film diblock copolymers: tilted lamellar phases
• Forces between chemically structured substrates mediated by critical fluids
• Block Copolymer at Nano-Patterned Surfaces
• Coarse Graining in Block Copolymer Films
• Interfacial Phenomena of Solvent-diluted Block Copolymers
• Phase lines in mean-field models with nonuniform external forces