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Materials science

On the straight and narrow

Nature volume 424, pages 378–379 (2003)Cite this article

Nanoscale chemical patterns written on a substrate can direct the self-assembly of polymer overlayers with remarkable precision. These polymer films, in turn, can be used as templates for nanofabrication.

Nanostructures of precisely defined size and position are essential for any addressable nanoscale device — such as an ultrahigh-density hard drive, in which each bit of material stores a bit of information. Amphiphilic organic molecules are attractive templates for making such structures, as they spontaneously form supramolecular aggregates (such as micelles) of near-uniform size, generating a multitude of identical nanoscopic objects in parallel. But this same feature causes a problem: the aggregates form simultaneously in many uncorrelated locations and so the nanostructures are never precisely positioned. On page 411 of this issue, Kim and co-workers1 overcome this obstacle by directing the self-assembly of polystyrene–poly(methyl methacrylate) — or PS–PMMA, a 'diblock copolymer' — on a lithographically patterned surface.

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Figure 1: Self-assembly of block copolymers on substrates.
Figure 2: Precise patterning.

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  1. Department of Chemical Engineering and Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

    Richard A. Register

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  1. Richard A. Register
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Register, R. On the straight and narrow. Nature 424, 378–379 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/424378a

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