Control of Directed Self-Assembly in Block Polymers by Polymeric Topcoats

The morphology of a block copolymer thin film is particularly sensitive to its boundary conditions. Lithographic applications of block polymers in the microelectronics and memory device industries require formation of morphologies with perpendicularly oriented domains. Current fabrication targets envisage the creation of dense arrays of structures with domain sizes in the sub-10 nm regime. Such length scales can be reached by resorting to block polymers with highly incompatible blocks (and a large Flory–Huggins parameter, χ). High χ values, however, generally lead to large differences in the surface energies of the corresponding blocks, thereby interfering with formation of the sought-after perpendicularly oriented domains. In this work, a coarse grain model is used to develop a topcoat strategy that enables control of the orientation of block copolymer domains in highly incompatible block polymer materials. A systematic study of a wide range of polymeric material combinations is presented, and the condit...

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