Self-Assembly of Symmetric Diblock Copolymers Confined in Spherical Nanopores

• DOI: 10.1021/ma071624t
• Publication Date: 2007-11-03T08:00:51Z
• Authors: Bin Yu; Baohui Li; Qinghua Jin; Datong Ding; An-Chang Shi
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology

Self-assembly of symmetric diblock copolymers confined in spherical nanopores is studied using simulated annealing Monte Carlo simulations. The dependence of the self-assembled morphologies and chain conformations on the degree of confinement and the strength of the surface interactions is examined systematically. A rich variety of novel structures under the three-dimensional confinement has been revealed. As the strength of the surface preference is increased gradually from neutral to weakly preferential and finally strongly preferential to one of the blocks, the observed sequence of stable structures is from perpendicular lamellae to helices and/or embedded structures and finally to concentric-spherical lamellae. As the degree of confinement decreases, the stable region of the concentric-spherical lamellae becomes larger, while that of the embedded structures becomes smaller. For the structures obtained in spherical nanopores, corresponding counterparts in two-dimensional (2D) confined systems can be id...