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Using tapered interfaces to manipulate nanoscale morphologies in ion-doped block polymers

  • Polymers/Soft Matter Research Letter
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Abstract

We detail the influence of tapered interfaces on the nanoscale morphologies of ion-doped poly(styrene-b-oligo-oxyethylene methacrylate) block polymers (BPs). Most significantly, the location of double-gyroid network phase window was found in ion-doped normal-tapered materials, and a similar window was not detectable in the corresponding non-tapered and inverse-tapered BPs. Additionally, the effective interaction parameters, χeff, were reduced substantially in the tapered materials in comparison with their non-tapered counterparts. Overall, this work demonstrates that tapering between polymer blocks provides unique control over BP morphologies and improves the material processability (due to lower χeff), potentially facilitating the development of future ion-conducting devices.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge AFOSR-PECASE (FA9550-09-1-0706) and National Science Foundation (DMR-1207041) for financial support. N. A. Nguyen was supported by NIST (grant no. 70NANOBIOH256) and funding provided through the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UD. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. We thank the W. M. Keck Electron Microscopy Facility at UD for use of their TEM and cryo-microtome facilities. This publication was made possible by the Delaware COBRE program, supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences–NIGMS (1 P30 GM110758-01) from the National Institutes of Health.

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Author notes

  1. Ellen H. Reed

    Present address: Current address: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvani, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, 19716, USA

    Wei-Fan Kuan, Ellen H. Reed, Michael E. Mackay & Thomas H. Epps III

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, 19716, USA

    Ngoc A. Nguyen, Michael E. Mackay & Thomas H. Epps III

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  1. Wei-Fan Kuan
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  2. Ellen H. Reed
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  5. Thomas H. Epps III
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Correspondence to Thomas H. Epps III.

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Kuan, WF., Reed, E.H., Nguyen, N.A. et al. Using tapered interfaces to manipulate nanoscale morphologies in ion-doped block polymers. MRS Communications 5, 251–256 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2015.19

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