APS Logo

Self-assembly of Block Copolymers with Ionic Liquid Crystals in Thin Films

POSTER

Abstract

Block copolymers (BCPs) self-assembly leads to plenty of promising applications in the area of electronics and energy storage. Thus, improving the ordering of BCP is crucial to optimize its performance in different applications. Adding ionic liquids (ILs) to BCPs has been reported a facile method to realize fast ordering because of its plasticization effect and wetting characteristics tunability. With similar chemical structure to ILs, ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) are liquid-crystalline salts also consisting of cations and anions. Differently, liquid-crystalline nature and thermotropic transition provide ILC with more fascinating features than IL when it is added to BCP. However, BCP/ILC system has not been well studied as BCP/IL system does. In this study, the effect of ILC additives on the self-assembly of BCP, PS-b-PMMA, under different annealing conditions has been investigated by using atomic force microscopy (AFM), grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS), and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). We observed a drastic change of ILC selective swelling behavior during its thermotropic transition. Moreover, it can be highlighted that ILC enhances the ordering in BCP without enlarging the domain size after the zone annealing.

Presenters

  • Chuqing Yuan

    Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston

Authors

  • Chuqing Yuan

    Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston

  • Tanguy Terlier

    Rice University, Shared Equipment Authority (SEA), Rice University, Shared Equipment Authority, Rice University, Shared Equipment Authority, SIMS Laboratory, Rice University, Shared Equipment Authority, SIMS laboratory, Rice University

  • Pradip Bhowmik

    Department of Chemistry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  • Alamgir Karim

    University of Houston, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston, Polymer, NIST, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, S333 Engineering, 4726 Calhoun Rd, Houston, TX, University of Houston, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston