Block copolymer-guided assembly of nanoparticles leads to the formation of nanocomposites with periodic arrangement of nanoparticles, which are important for applications such as photonic devices and sensors. However, linear block copolymers offer limited control over the internal arrangement of nanoparticles inside their hosting domains as well as the long-range ordering of the entire nanocomposite film.
The first part of the talk will focus on the molecular level: how the chemical design of the polymeric system – both compositional and architectural – could be used to tailor chemical interactions and manipulate chain conformation, which, in turn, influence the local nanoparticle distribution inside the domains they segregate in. In the second part I will show how the utilization of topographically patterned substrates could be used not only to align block copolymer domains along a macroscopic coordinate but also to obtain isolated patterns on non-regular features.
