The Effects of Composition, Solvent Selectivity, and Additive on the Morphology of Hybrid Nano Thin Films Composed of Self-Assembled Block Copolymer and Titanium Dioxide

Abstract

Hybrid thin films composed of block copolymer(BCP) and TiO2 with Various morphologies on the nanoscale were fabricated using self-assembly of block copolymer combined with sot-gel proccess. The factors governing morphology Changes considered in this study are block copolymer composition, selectivity of solvent and the inclusion of an additive. We also investigated the efficiency of photoluminescence for selected films with different morphologies. Micelle or nanowire structure can be derived from the self-assembly of poly (styrene-block-4-vinyl pyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) depending on the relative selectivity of the solvent for the two blocks, and the titanium tetraisopropoxide (Ti{OCH(CH3)(2)}(4), TTIP) is coordinated with nitrogen in P4VP block. Addition of a third component 3-pentadecylphenol into the BCP/sol-gel mixture solution induces morphology change as a result of the change of relative volume fraction of the BCP. We confirmed that the efficiency of TiO2 fluorescence changes for films depending on morphologies.