The Effect of Temperature on the Morphology and Kinetics of Surface Pattern Formation in Thin Block Copolymer Films

Published

October 29, 2007

Author(s)

A P. Smith, Jack F. Douglas, Eric J. Amis, Alamgir Karim

Abstract

Hole formation and size evolution on the surface of thin films of symmetric diblock copolymers is simultaneously investigated as a function of time, t, temperature, T, and film thickness, h. The hole size h approaches a steady state value at long times where this limiting value increases as the temperature increases. A model of the hole growth kinetics is introduced to describe these observations. The time constant characterizing the rate of approach of h to its asymptotic value first decreases and then increases with increasing T. These observations suggest a reduction of the surface elasticity of the outer block copolymer layer with increasing temperature and a critical slowing down of the film equilibration to its steady state. These effects are tentatively interpreted to arise from thermal fluctuations associated with the disordering transition.

Citation

Langmuir

Volume

23

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

block copolymers, critical fluctuation effects on dynamics, defects, hole formation, kinetics, order-disorder transition, surface pattern formation

Citation

Smith, A. , Douglas, J. , Amis, E. and Karim, A. (2007), The Effect of Temperature on the Morphology and Kinetics of Surface Pattern Formation in Thin Block Copolymer Films, Langmuir, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=852729 (Accessed October 21, 2025)