Locking Effect of Metal Infiltration for Diblock Copolymer Self-assembly during Solvent Vapor Annealing

Date: 2022/12/02 - 2022/12/02

Academic Seminar: Locking Effect of Metal Infiltration for Diblock Copolymer Self-assembly during Solvent Vapor Annealing

Speaker: Dr. Mingcha Ma, Postdoctoral Researcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Time: 10:40 - 11:15, December 2, 2022 (Beijing Time)

Abstract

Block copolymers are considered as a key solution for nanofabrication and pattern transfer ascribed to their ordered nanostructures formed by self-assembly. The self-assembly structures during solvent vapor annealing (SVA) depend on swelling ratio, which could be restrained by infiltrating metal to bind with one or more copolymer blocks. Metal infiltration, as a reversible crosslink method, is vital for copolymer morphology design. In this talk, I will introduce the locking effect of metal infiltration in polystyrene-block-poly(2-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P2VP) diblock copolymer thin films in terms of swelling ratio and morphology during SVA. For swelling ratio, I will discuss the relationship between swelling ratio and the amount of infiltrated metal. Instead of the suboptimal unloading method of acid, I will introduce using the aqueous solvent of potassium hydroxide (KOH) + ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid disodium salt dihydrate (EDTA) to totally unload the metal from infiltrated films. Regarding morphology, I will discuss various features according to different locking effect intensities and the reversible morphology due to metallization and demetallization. Then, I will introduce the future perspectives of metal infiltration in 2D or 3D structure design.

Biography

Mingchao Ma is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is JI's alumnus . He received his Bachelor’s (2015) and Ph.D. degrees (2020) in mechanical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research focuses on block copolymer self-assembly.