Emergent symmetries in block copolymer epitaxy
Name
s41467-019-10896-5.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.8 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
5b05d521f053d89fe2e1a0a00a188fe3
Author(s)
Ding, Yi
Gadelrab, Karim R
Mizrahi Rodriguez, Katherine
Huang, Hejin
Ross, Caroline A
Alexander-Katz, Alfredo
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019, The Author(s). The directed self-assembly (DSA) of block copolymers (BCPs) has shown promise in fabricating customized two-dimensional (2D) geometries at the nano- and meso-scale. Here, we discover spontaneous symmetry breaking and superlattice formation in DSA of BCP. We observe the emergence of low symmetry phases in high symmetry templates for BCPs that would otherwise not exhibit these phases in the bulk or thin films. The emergence phenomena are found to be a general behavior of BCP in various template layouts with square local geometry, such as 44 and 32434 Archimedean tilings and octagonal quasicrystals. To elucidate the origin of this phenomenon and confirm the stability of the emergent phases, we implement self-consistent field theory (SCFT) simulations and a strong-stretching theory (SST)-based analytical model. Our work demonstrates an emergent behavior of soft matter and draws an intriguing connection between 2-dimensional soft matter self-assembly at the mesoscale and inorganic epitaxy at the atomic scale.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10896-5
