Mesostructured silica films were formed from cross-linked poly(d8-styrene-block-2-vinylpyridine) (dPS-b-P2VP) diblock copolymer template films by swelling with silica precursor solutions. The mesoscopic and macroscopic morphologies of the resulting materials depended strongly on the extent of P2VP cross-linking. Without cross-linking, extensive rearrangement of the initial 2D hexagonal arrangem...

Nanopores based on protein channels inserted into lipid membranes have paved the way towards a wide-range of inexpensive biosensors, especially for DNA sequencing. A key obstacle in using these biological ion channels as nanodevices is the poor stability of lipid bilayer membranes. Amphiphilic block copolymer membranes have emerged as a robust alternative to lipid membranes. While previous effo...

The applications of block copolymers are myriad, ranging from electronics to functionalized resins to therapeutics. The ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) is an especially valuable reaction for block copolymer assembly because each block can be generated with length control. We sought to use this polymerization to expand the repertoire of block copolymers by implementing a strategy t...

The effect of core-shell polymer-coated nanoparticles on block copolymer morphology is investigated systematically by controlling particle positioning within a block copolymer template. Our approach of varying the areal chain density (Σ) of short thiol terminated polystyrene (PS-SH) brushes on the particles where the molecular weight (Mn) of the PS ligands (2.5 kg/mol) is used to control the fr...

Conjugated polymers and copolymers have been known to have electroluminescent properties for a number of years. This study examines the electroluminescent properties of a particular segmented block copolymer. This copolymer uoresces quite well both in solution and as a thin lm, but a single layer organic LED made from it does not work well. I investigate the e ect of blending 1% PAN/CSA into th...

We present molecular dynamics simulations coupled with a dissipative particle dynamics thermostat to model and simulate the behavior of symmetric diblock copolymer/nanoparticle systems under simple shear flow. We consider two categories of nanoparticles, one with selective interactions toward one of the blocks of a model diblock copolymer and the other with nonselective interactions with both b...

We investigated the structural features of micelles formed by the self-association of the pentablock copolymer poly[ N,N -(diethyl amino)ethyl methacrylate]-block-poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(propylene oxide)-block-poly(ethyleneoxide)-block-poly[ N,N -(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate] (PDEAEM-PEO-PPO-PEO-PDEAEM) in aqueous solutions by using small-angle neutron scattering SANS. The pentabloc...