Letter abstract
Nature Materials 7, 142 - 145 (2007)
Published online: 25 November 2007 | doi:10.1038/nmat2068
Subject Categories: Polymers | Optical, photonic and optoelectronic materials
Reversible tuning of a block-copolymer nanostructure via electric fields
Kristin Schmidt1, Heiko G. Schoberth1, Markus Ruppel2, Heiko Zettl1, Helmut Hänsel1, Thomas M. Weiss3,5, Volker Urban4, Georg Krausch1,6 & Alexander Böker1
Block copolymers consisting of incompatible components self-assemble into microphase-separated domains yielding highly regular structures with characteristic length scales of the order of several tens of nanometres. Therefore, in the past decades, block copolymers have gained considerable potential for nanotechnological applications, such as in nanostructured networks and membranes, nanoparticle templates and high-density data storage media1, 2, 3, 4. However, the characteristic size of the resulting structures is usually determined by molecular parameters of the constituent polymer molecules and cannot easily be adjusted on demand. Here, we show that electric d.c. fields can be used to tune the characteristic spacing of a block-copolymer nanostructure with high accuracy by as much as 6% in a fully reversible way on a timescale in the range of several milliseconds. We discuss the influence of various physical parameters on the tuning process and study the time response of the nanostructure to the applied field. A tentative explanation of the observed effect is given on the basis of anisotropic polarizabilities and permanent dipole moments of the monomeric constituents. This electric-field-induced effect further enhances the high technological potential of block-copolymer-based soft-lithography applications5, 6.
- Lehrstuhl für Physikalische Chemie II, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany
- Lehrstuhl für Makromolekulare Chemie II, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany
- European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), 38043 Grenoble, France
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
- Present address: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
- Present address: Universität Mainz, Forum 2, 55128 Mainz, Germany
Correspondence to: Alexander Böker1 e-mail: Alexander.Boeker@uni-bayreuth.de
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