Kinetics of directed self-assembly of block copolymers on chemically patterned substrates

26th IUPAP Conference on Computational Physics

物理学;计算机科学

Müller, Marcus^1 ; Li, Weihua^1 ; Rey, Juan Carlos Orozco^1 ; Welling, Ulrich^1

Institute for Theoretical Physics, Georg-August University, Göttingen

D37073, Germany^1

关键词: Block copolymer thin films;    Chemical pattern;    Chemically patterned substrates;    Directed self-assembly;    Free energy landscape;    Kinetics of structure formation;    Patterned surface;    Polymer modeling;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/640/1/012010/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/640/1/012010

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Chemically patterned surfaces have been successfully employed to direct the kinetics of self-assembly of block copolymers into dense, periodic morphologies ("chemoepitaxy"). Significant efforts have been directed towards understanding the kinetics of structure formation and, particularly, the formation and annihilation of defects. In the present manuscript we use computer simulations of a soft, coarse-grained polymer model to study the kinetics of structure formation of lamellar-forming block copolymer thin films on a chemical pattern of lines and spaces. The case where the copolymer material replicates the surface pattern and the more subtle scenario of sparse guiding patterns are considered. Our simulation results highlight (1) the importance of the early stages of pattern-directed self-assembly that template the subsequent morphology and (2) the dependence of the free-energy landscape on the incompatibility between the two blocks of the copolymer.