STRUCTURE OF CRYSTALLINE DOMAINS IN SEMICRYSTALLINE BLOCK COPOLYMER THIN FILMS

Thin film morphology of a symmetric semicrystalline oxyethylene/oxybutylene diblock copolymer (E76B38) on silicon was investigated by tapping mode atomic force microscopy (AFM). It is found that the nascent thin film is composed of multiple polymer layers having mixed thicknesses of L ≈ L0 and L ≈ L0/2 (L0 is the long period of the block copolymer in bulk) besides the first layer near the substrate. This shows that the crystalline domain in the block copolymer consists of double poly(oxyethylene) layers. Annealing leads to disappearance of the polymer layers with thickness L ≈ L0/2, indicating that such polymer layers are metastable.