Leniart Arkadiusz A, Pula Przemyslaw, Style Robert W, Majewski Pawel W
Department of Chemistry, University of Warsaw, Warsaw 02089, Poland.
Department of Materials, Soft and Living Materials, ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 10, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
ACS Macro Lett. 2022 Jan 18;11(1):121-126. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.1c00677. Epub 2021 Dec 30.
Solvent evaporation annealing (SEA) is a straightforward, single-step casting and annealing method of block copolymers (BCP) processing yielding large-grained morphologies in a very short time. Here, we present a quantitative analysis of BCP grain-coarsening in thin films under controlled evaporation of the solvent. Our study is aimed at understanding time and BCP concentration influence on the rate of the lateral growth of BCP grains. By systematically investigating the coarsening kinetics at various BCP concentrations, we observed a steeply decreasing exponential dependence of the kinetics power-law time exponent on polymer concentration. We used this dependence to formulate a mathematical model of BCP ordering under nonstationary conditions and a 2D, time- and concentration-dependent coarsening rate diagram, which can be used as an aid in engineering the BCP processing pathway in SEA and also in other directed self-assembly methods that utilize BCP-solvent interactions such as solvent vapor annealing.
溶剂蒸发退火（SEA）是一种简单的单步浇铸和退火方法，用于处理嵌段共聚物（BCP），能在极短时间内产生大晶粒形态。在此，我们对溶剂可控蒸发条件下薄膜中BCP晶粒粗化进行了定量分析。我们的研究旨在了解时间和BCP浓度对BCP晶粒横向生长速率的影响。通过系统研究不同BCP浓度下的粗化动力学，我们观察到动力学幂律时间指数对聚合物浓度呈急剧下降的指数依赖性。我们利用这种依赖性建立了非稳态条件下BCP有序化的数学模型以及二维、时间和浓度相关的粗化速率图，这可用于辅助设计SEA中BCP的加工路径，也可用于其他利用BCP - 溶剂相互作用的定向自组装方法，如溶剂蒸汽退火。
