Self-Assembly of Lamellar/Micellar Block Copolymers Induced Through Their Rich Exposure to Various Solvent Vapors: An AFM Study

In this work, we have employed an advanced method of solvent vapor annealing to expose spin-cast thin films made from various lamellar and micellar block copolymers to generous amounts of different types of solvent vapors, with the final goal of stimulating the films’ self-assembly into (hierarchically) ordered structures. As revealed by atomic force microscopy measurements, periodic lamellar nanostructures of molecular dimensions based on poly(4-vinylpyridine)-b-polybutadiene and poly(2-vinylpyridine)-b-polybutadiene, as well as micellar structures further packed into either (parallel) stripe-like or honeycomb-resembling configurations based on poly(2-vinylpyridine)-b-poly(tert-butyl methacrylate)-b-poly(methacrylate cyclohexyl), were successfully produced through processing.