Organic-inorganic thin films using block copolymer blend as a template

초록

Block copolymer can provide a very simple but robust route to creating well-organized, well-defined organic/inorganic nanocomposites based on self-assembly. In this work, two cylinder-forming block copolymers are mixed and used as a template for nanocomposites. Controlling the orientation and order is key for their practical applications. For this purpose, poly(styrene-block-ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) diblock copolymer is used as one component for directing the structure formation because PS-b-PEO has recently been shown to exhibit long-range lateral order with controlled orientation, and poly(styrene-block-vinyl pyridine) (PS-b-PVP) as the second component for incorporating the inorganic materials because the pyridine group has strong ability to interact with inorganic precursors. The blend films are found to show well-organized cylindrical structure with both parallel and perpendicular orientations, and inorganic particles to selectively be incorporated along the microstructure of blend films. PS-b-PVP-b-PEO triblock copolymers are used to generate the nanocomposites in the same way for comparison.