Polarity-Switching Top Coats Enable Orientation of Sub–10-nm Block Copolymer Domains

Block copolymers (BCPs) must necessarily have high interaction parameters (χ), a fundamental measure of block incompatibility, to self-assemble into sub-10-nanometer features. Unfortunately, a high χ often results from blocks that have disparate interfacial energies, which makes the formation of use...

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Veröffentlicht in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2012-11, Vol.338 (6108), p.775-779
Hauptverfasser: Bates, Christopher M., Seshimo, Takehiro, Maher, Michael J., Durand, William J., Cushen, Julia D., Dean, Leon M., Blachut, Gregory, Ellison, Christopher J., Willson, C. Grant
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Block copolymers (BCPs) must necessarily have high interaction parameters (χ), a fundamental measure of block incompatibility, to self-assemble into sub-10-nanometer features. Unfortunately, a high χ often results from blocks that have disparate interfacial energies, which makes the formation of useful thin-film domain orientations challenging. To mitigate interfacial forces, polymers composed of maleic anhydride and two other components have been designed as top coats that can be spin-coated from basic aqueous solution in the ring-opened, acid salt form. When baked, the anhydride reforms and switches polarity to create a neutral layer enabling BCP feature alignment not possible by thermal annealing alone. Top coats were applied to the lamella-forming block copolymers poly(styrene-block-trimethyilylstyrene-block-styrene) and poly(trimethylsilylstyrene-block-lactide), which were thermally annealed to produce perpendicular features with linewidths of 15 and 9 nanometers, respectively.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1226046