Large-Grained Cylindrical Block Copolymer Morphologies by One-Step Room-Temperature Casting
Arkadiusz A. Leniart, Przemysław Puła, Esther H. R. Tsai, Paweł W. Majewski
Abstract
., spin- or blade-coater. By analyzing the morphologies of the quenched samples, we identify a relatively narrow range of polymer concentration in the wet film, just above the order-disorder concentration, to be critical for obtaining large-grained morphologies. This finding is corroborated by the analysis of the grain-growth kinetics of horizontally oriented cylindrical domains where relatively large growth exponents (1/2) are observed, indicative of a more rapid defect-annihilation mechanism in the concentrated BCP solution than in thermally annealed BCP melts. Furthermore, the analysis of temperature-resolved kinetics data allows us to calculate the Arrhenius activation energy of the grain coarsening in this one-step BCP ordering process.