title: Perfectly Ordered Patterns Formed by a Heterogeneous Nucleation Process of Block Copolymer Self-Assembly Under Rectangular Confinement.
abstract: The heterogeneous nucleation process during the phase separation of binary blends of the AB diblock and the C homopolymer induced by rectangular confinement is studied by cell dynamics simulation based on the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory. The main goal is to yield large-scale ordered hexagonal patterns by tailoring the surface potentials of the sidewalls. Our study reveals a crucial condition to induce the desired heterogeneous nucleation process in which the nucleated domain grains grow and merge into a defect-free pattern. Specifically, nucleations are induced simultaneously by two parallel sidewalls with a strong surface potential, whereas the spontaneous nucleation and the heterogeneous nucleation at the other two walls with a weak surface potential are suppressed. Moreover, the confinement effect of the other two walls can ensure that the two rows of nucleated domains have correlated positions. Importantly, we find that the ordering process under the crucial condition exhibits a high tolerance to the rectangular sizes. Only a few defects in thousands of domains are occasionally caused that are observed to be annihilated in a short-annealing time via various mechanisms. This study may provide a facile route to prepare large-scale ordered patterns via a simple rectangular confinement.
authors.affiliation: Ningxia Key Laboratory of Information Sensing & Intelligent Desert, School of Physics and Electronic-Electrical Engineering, Ningxia University , Yinchuan 750021, China.|State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Ningxia Key Laboratory of Information Sensing & Intelligent Desert, School of Physics and Electronic-Electrical Engineering, Ningxia University , Yinchuan 750021, China.
authors.forename: Siwen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Ningxia Key Laboratory of Information Sensing & Intelligent Desert, School of Physics and Electronic-Electrical Engineering, Ningxia University , Yinchuan 750021, China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Weihua
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5133-0267
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li