Modifying Surface Fluctuations of Polymer Melt Films with Substrate Modification

Published

September 1, 2017

Author(s)

Yang Zhou, Qiming He, Fan Zhang, Feipeng Yang, Suresh Narayanan, Guangcui Yuan, Ali Dhinojwala, Mark D. Foster

Abstract

Deposition of a plasma polymerized film on a silicon substrate changes the fluctuations on the surface of a sufficiently thin, melt polystyrene (PS) film atop the substrate. Surface fluctuation relaxation times measured with X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) for ca. 4R6dg^ thick melt films for 131k linear PS on silicon and on a plasma polymer modified silicon wafer can both be described using a hydrodynamic continuum theory (HCT) that assumes the film is characterized throughout its depth by the bulk viscosity. However, when the film thickness is reduced to 3R_g, confinement effects are evident. The surface fluctuations are slower than predicted using the HCT, and the confinement effect for the PS on silicon is larger than that for the PS on the plasma polymerized film. This deviation is due to a difference in the thicknesses of the strongly adsorbed layers at the substrate which are impacted by the substrate surface energy.

Citation

ACS Macro Letters

Volume

6

Issue

9

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

Polymer, Surface Fluctuations, plasma modified surface

Citation

Zhou, Y. , He, Q. , Zhang, F. , Yang, F. , Narayanan, S. , Yuan, G. , Dhinojwala, A. and Foster, M. (2017), Modifying Surface Fluctuations of Polymer Melt Films with Substrate Modification, ACS Macro Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923244 (Accessed October 22, 2025)