Large-scale roll-to-roll fabrication of vertically oriented block copolymer thin films

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Polymer Science

Background:

• Directed self-assembly of block copolymers is crucial for nanofabrication.
• Achieving high-orientation fidelity in nanostructures remains a challenge for large-scale production.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a scalable method for fabricating vertically oriented nanostructures using block copolymers.
• To investigate the effectiveness of Cold Zone Annealing-Sharp (CZA-S) for directed self-assembly.
• To demonstrate the potential application of the fabricated nanostructures.

Main Methods:

• Utilized cylindrical block copolymer (c-BCP) thin films.
• Employed a dynamic sharp temperature gradient field, termed Cold Zone Annealing-Sharp (CZA-S).
• Scaled up the process on a prototype 70 ft × 1 ft roll-to-roll (R2R) platform at 25 μm/s with 9 CZA units.

Main Results:

• Achieved nearly 100% vertical orientation of sub-100 nm cylinders in c-BCP films using CZA-S.
• Demonstrated successful scale-up of the R2R fabrication process.
• Static thermal annealing in a conventional vacuum oven yielded inferior results.

Conclusions:

• CZA-S is a highly effective method for achieving vertically oriented nanostructures in block copolymer films.
• The R2R platform enables large-scale, high-throughput fabrication of these nanostructures.
• Fabricated high-density silicon oxide nanodot arrays from the annealed BCP template, showcasing application potential.