AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Tuesday Sessions
       Session NS2-TuM

Paper NS2-TuM9
Tuning the Self-Assembly of Metal Nanoclusters on Diblock Copolymer Templates

Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 10:40 am, Room 2020

Session: Nanoscale Manipulation and Assembly
Presenter: S.B. Darling, Argonne National Laboratory
Authors: S.B. Darling, Argonne National Laboratory
A. Hoffmann, Argonne National Laboratory
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Polymers and metals are increasingly becoming intertwined in technological systems. In particular, hybrid materials that take advantage of the ability of soft matter to self-assemble and the ability of hard matter to incorporate magnetic, electronic, catalytic, or photonic functionality are of great interest. In this study, we have investigated how spatially selective electron irradiation modifies the diffusion behavior of silver evaporated onto poly(styrene-block-methylmethacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA) films. This diblock copolymer self-assembles into cylinders of PMMA in a PS matrix, where the film thickness has been chosen such that both materials are present at the free interface in an alternating stripe structure. On unexposed films, the Ag selectively adsorbs to the PS domains due to different diffusion mobilities on the two polymeric materials. Exposure to an electron beam affects the polymer blocks in different ways and thereby provides a means to manipulate this motion. Furthermore, this methodology enables a connection between the nanoscopic length scale of diblock copolymer self-assembly with conventional top-down mesoscopic length scales. We performed Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations in order to provide some insight into the diffusion behavior and, hence, the relative significance of polymer-metal and metal-metal interactions.