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Reversible tuning of a block-copolymer nanostructure via electric fields

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 142–145 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

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.

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Figure 1: Illustration of the effect of an electric field on the lamellar distance of a block-copolymer solution.
Figure 2: Dependence of the relative change in the lamellar distance Δd=(dperpendicular−dparallel)/dwithout field on the electric-field strength E.
Figure 3: Time dependence of the lamellar distance of aligned lamellae.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank H. Krejtschi and his team for assistance with building the capacitors, F. Schubert, F. Fischer, E. Di Cola, M. Sztucki, P. Bösecke and T. Narayanan for help at the ESRF and Y. Tsori and D. Andelman for fruitful discussions. We are grateful to the ESRF for provision of synchrotron beam time. V.U. acknowledges LDRD sponsorship through US-DOE ORNL/UT-Battelle Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. This work was carried out in the framework of the Sonderforschungsbereich 481 (TP A2) funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG). A.B. acknowledges support by the Lichtenberg-Programm of the VolkswagenStiftung.

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Author notes

  1. Thomas M. Weiss

    Present address: Present address: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Menlo Park, California 94025, USA,

  2. Georg Krausch

    Present address: Present address: Universität Mainz, Forum 2, 55128 Mainz, Germany,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lehrstuhl für Physikalische Chemie II, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany

    Kristin Schmidt, Heiko G. Schoberth, Heiko Zettl, Helmut Hänsel, Georg Krausch & Alexander Böker

  2. Lehrstuhl für Makromolekulare Chemie II, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany

    Markus Ruppel

  3. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), 38043 Grenoble, France

    Thomas M. Weiss

  4. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

    Volker Urban

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Correspondence to Alexander Böker.

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Schmidt, K., Schoberth, H., Ruppel, M. et al. Reversible tuning of a block-copolymer nanostructure via electric fields. Nature Mater 7, 142–145 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2068

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