Functional Nanostructures Based On Polymeric Templates

Project Objectives. The molecular self-assembly of diblock copolymers provides a simple, robust route to create well-defined arrays of functional nanostructures. In recent work, funded by the NSF Partnership in Nanotechnology: Functional Nanostructures program, we developed techniques by which diblock copolymer thin-films can be transformed into robust nanoporous array templates, and then with subsequent chemical modifications, into arrays of functional nanostructures. This simple approach offers rapid fabrication of nanoscale elements with characteristic dimensions that can be chosen from the 5-100 nm range — a scale that is likely to impact nanotechnology with applications ranging from magnetic data storage to chemical sensing to microelectronics.