Functional metallic nanopatterns with various components and morphologies via block copolymer lithography and their applications

Abstract

Metallic nanostructures attract enormous research attention. Especially, ordered metal nanopatterns are crucial requirements for electronics, magnetics, catalysis, photonics and so on. Moreover, multicomponent nanopattern, including nanoalloy, offer novel material properties, precisely and broadly tunable with chemical composition and nanoscale dimension. Despite considerable progress in the synthetic route to metal nanostructures, highly ordered metal nanopatterning consisting of various components over a large-area is still challenging. Here we present a generalized route to synthesize single-crystalline intermetallic nanoalloy arrays with dimensional and compositional uniformity via block copolymer self-assembly. In addition, we demonstrate nanodomain swelling block copolymer lithography as a general route to the systematic morphology tuning of metal nanopatterns from conventional block copolymer. We investigated precise controllability over dimension and composition of nanoalloys facilitated tailored synergistic properties, such a s accelerated catalytic growth of vertical carbon nanotubes from nanoalloy arrays. Moreover, the tuning of plasmonic properties Au nanopatterns by nanodomain swelling were characterized and analyzed. Finally, we observed time evolution of diblock copolymer under matrix solvent vapor atmosphere and proposed the mechanism of the phenomenon. The gradual transition of block copolymer morphologies could provide new block copolymer thin film morphology, which is controllable coexistence of different structure on the substrate. In addition, we tried multidirectional self-assembly of block copolymer by external shear force nanodomain alignment and partial crosslinking of polymer thin film. This technique could provide nanodomain aligned with various directions from a single block copolymer thin film which could be used in polarizers, electronic circuits, and so on.