Stability and Elasticity of Ultrathin Sphere-Patterned Block Copolymer Films
Abstract
Sphere-patterned ultrathin block copolymers films are potentially interesting for a variety of applications in nanotechnology. We use self-consistent field theory to investigate the elastic response of sphere monolayer films with respect to in-plane shear, in-plane extension and compression deformations, and with respect to bending. The relations between the in-plane elastic moduli is roughly compatible with the expectations for two-dimensional elastic systems with hexagonal symmetry, with one notable exception: The pure shear and the simple shear moduli differ from each other by roughly 20%. Even more importantly, the bending constants are found to be negative, indicating that free-standing block copolymer membranes made of only sphere mono-layer are inherently unstable above the glass transition. Our results are discussed in view of experimental findings.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2404.18129,
title = {Stability and Elasticity of Ultrathin Sphere-Patterned Block Copolymer Films},
author = {Le Qiao and Daniel A. Vega and Friederike Schmid},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.18129},
year = {2024}
}