Campus Units
Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Plant Sciences Institute
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Submitted Manuscript
Publication Date
2019
Journal or Book Title
arXiv
Abstract
We investigate equilibrium microstructures exhibited by diblock copolymers in confined 3D geometries. We perform Self-Consistent Field Theory (SCFT) simulations using a finite-element based computational framework (Ackerman et al. 2017), that provides the flexibility to compute equilibrium structures under arbitrary geometries. We consider a sequence of 3D geometries (tetrahedron to sphere) that have the same volume but exhibit varying curvature. This allows us to study the interplay between edge and curvature effects of the 3D geometries on the equilibrium microstructures. We observe that beyond a length scale, the equilibrium structure changes from an interconnected network to a multi-layered concentric shell as the curvature of the 3D geometry is reduced. However, below this length scale the equilibrium structure remains a multi-layered concentric shell independent of curvature. We additionally explore variations in the equilibrium microstructures at a few discrete volume fractions. This study provides insight into possible frustrated phases that can arise in AB diblock systems while varying the shape of confinement geometry.
Copyright Owner
The Authors
Copyright Date
2019
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Tenneti, Ananth; Ackerman, David M.; and Ganapathysubramanian, Baskar, "Equilibrium microstructures of diblock copolymers under 3D confinement" (2019). Mechanical Engineering Publications. 382.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/me_pubs/382
Comments
This is a pre-print of the article Tenneti, Ananth, David M. Ackerman, and Baskar Ganapathysubramanian. "Equilibrium microstructures of diblock copolymers under 3D confinement." arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.09088 (2019). Posted with permission.