Effects of Confinement Geometry on Diblock Copolymer Systems Using Finite Element Analysis
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The Symposium provides undergraduates from all academic disciplines with an opportunity to share their research with the university community and other guests through conference-style oral presentations. The Symposium represents part of a larger effort of Iowa State University to enhance, support, and celebrate undergraduate research activity.
Though coordinated by the University Honors Program, all undergraduate students are eligible and encouraged to participate in the Symposium. Undergraduates conducting research but not yet ready to present their work are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the presentation process and students not currently involved in research are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the broad range of undergraduate research activities that are taking place at ISU.
The first Symposium was held in April 2007. The 39 students who presented research and their mentors collectively represented all of ISU's Colleges: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Business, Design, Engineering, Human Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and the Graduate College. The event has grown to regularly include more than 100 students presenting on topics that span the broad range of disciplines studied at ISU.
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Abstract
Diblock copolymers have received much attention in recent years due to the unique, highly ordered microstructures they form. Potential applications of diblock copolymers include nanowire fabrication, organic electronics, and nanolithography. The formation of microstructures in a bulk system depends on the composition of the block copolymer and the strength of the interaction force that leads to self segregation. The addition of geometric confinement leads to a wider variety of structures compared to a bulk system. These structures depend on the geometry of the confinement, e.g the walls of a nanopore, and the strength of the interaction between the pore wall and polymers. Accurately predicting structures for a given composition, segregation strength, and confinement geometry is a challenge not well suited for experimental work. We use computational simulations to greatly simplify the process of exploring diblock copolymer systems across a large range of parameter values. Our in house framework allows for simple creation of phase diagrams of diblock copolymer systems in any confinement geometry. In this work we investigate the microstructures of diblock copolymer systems confined in a triangular nanopore of varying sizes.