Effect of Nanoscopic Particles on the Mesophase Structure of Diblock Copolymers

Abstract

Introduction. The fabrication of novel biomimetic photonic and electronic materials requires the manipulation of both organic and inorganic materials at the nanometer length scale. One possible means of achieving this level of control is to add inorganic nanoparticles to a melt of diblock copolymers. The microphase separation of the copolymers into nanoscopic, ordered domains could be harnessed to “template” the organization of the particles into nanoplanes, -wires, or -spheres within the polymer matrix. However, as we show below, the particles are not passive and can affect the overall morphology of the mixture. We also show that this effect is sufficiently robust that it can be found in both the strong and intermediate segregation limits of the diblock melts (i.e., both low and intermediate temperatures).