Pressure-Induced Order Transition in Nanodot-Forming Diblock Copolymers at the Air/Water Interface

Understanding and controlling the processes in block copolymer (BC) monolayers at the air/water interface during surface area compression is a key issue for producing ultrathin films of predetermined morphology with well-defined order and known dimensions. Langmuir isotherms of nanodot-forming BC mo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the American Chemical Society Vol. 133; no. 49; pp. 19702 - 19705
Main Authors Perepichka, Iryna I, Borozenko, Kateryna, Badia, Antonella, Bazuin, C. Geraldine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Chemical Society 14.12.2011
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Understanding and controlling the processes in block copolymer (BC) monolayers at the air/water interface during surface area compression is a key issue for producing ultrathin films of predetermined morphology with well-defined order and known dimensions. Langmuir isotherms of nanodot-forming BC monolayers generally display a plateau indicative of a 2D phase transition, which has been the subject of various interpretations in the literature. Here, based on investigations of Langmuir–Blodgett and Langmuir–Schaefer nanodot films of PS-P4VP mixed with 3-n-pentadecylphenol (PDP), we show by atomic force microscopy (AFM) that it involves a change in nanodot packing order (from quasi-hexagonal to quasi-square), argued to be a general phenomenon for nanodot BC monolayers. It is accompanied by system-specific conformational changes (as discussed in previous literature), which, in the present case, implicate PDP alkyl chain ordering, as deduced previously from in situ infrared data and indirectly supported here by AFM imaging.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0002-7863
1520-5126
1520-5126
DOI:10.1021/ja209502d