Role of growing nanoparticle architecture on dewetting of polystyrene thin films

The flow properties and performance of polymer films have attracted significant intellectual and technological interest. It is well known that the dispersion of nanoparticles enhances the range of properties that polymers have to offer. While there are many reports exist on spherical nanoparticles, our understanding of the role of other complex architectures is only limited. Motivated by this lacuna, we report the dewetting dynamics of polystyrene films incorporated with CdSe nanotetrapods with variable arm lengths. Results were compared with films incorporated with CdSe quantum dots. In line with the earlier reports, the addition of CdSe quantum dots slowed down the dewetting of polymer nanocomposite (PNC) films. However, intriguingly, the addition of CdSe nanotetrapods resulted in enhancement of dewetting and the extent of enhancement scaled with the arm length of the tetrapods. These results reveal the importance of nano-architecture on the stability and in turn the performance of polymer films. We tentatively interpret the results via the differences in the phase separation induced by the architecture of the nanoparticles.