Modeling the Self-assembly of Block Copolymers Upon Solvent Evaporation in Thin Films with Dynamical Self-consistent Field Theory

ORAL

Abstract

The evaporation of solvent from a block copolymer solution is a method widely used to self-assemble block copolymers in thin films. Due to a vast parameter space and the nonequilibrium nature of the evaporation process, reliably generating well-ordered structures remains a great challenge. We use Dynamical Self-consistent Field Theory (DSCFT) to model the evaporation of a diblock copolymer solution by controlling the rate of solvent diffusion out of the film. The effect of tuning parameters such as solvent volatility, solvent selectivity towards one of the blocks, and block copolymer composition on the self-assembly is investigated.

*This work was supported as part of the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET), anEnergy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, BasicEnergy Sciences under Award #DE-SC0019272. Use was made of the computational facilitiesadministered by the Center for Scientific Computing at the CNSI and MRL (an NSF MRSEC; DMR-1720256) and purchased through NSF CNS-1725797

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Presenters

  • Anthony J Cooper

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

Authors

  • Anthony J Cooper

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Douglas Grzetic

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Alexander T Bridge

    • University of Texas at Austin

  • Kris T Delaney

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Glenn H Fredrickson

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Benny Freeman

    • University of Texas at Austin