Barite particles with a rich variety of well-defined morphologies have been synthesized by using double-hydrophilic block copolymers (which consist of a hydrophilic solvating block and a hydrophilic binding block) as crystal growth modifiers to direct the controlled precipitation of barium sulfate from aqueous solution. The influences of variation in functional group and molecular structure of ...

To meet the increasing demand for patterning smaller feature sizes, a lithography technique is required with the ability to pattern sub-20 nm features. While top-down photolithography is approaching its limit in the continued drive to meet Moore's law, the use of directed self-assembly (DSA) of block copolymers (BCPs) offers a promising route to meet this challenge in achieving nanometre featur...

news & views can be resolved with a spatial resolution of ~20 nm. Furthermore, the potential for high-resolution magnetic imaging is demonstrated by resolving Abrikosov vortices with 120 nm minimum lateral distance in a Nb thin film at B ~0.2 T (Fig. 1b). The combination of high spatial sensitivity with high bandwidth suggests the approach could have a range of exciting applications including t...

Block copolymers comprising a poly(styrene) and a poly(L-lysine) or poly(L-glutamic acid) block were obtained by sequential reversible addition−fragmentation chain Transfer (RAFT) and N-carboxyanhydride (NCA) polymerization. Subsequent partial glycosylation of the poly(L-glutamic acid) block with D-galactosamine (GA) and the poly(L-lysine) block with lactobionic acid (LA) yielded block copolyme...

On the basis of elastic light scattering, we have compared the capacity of the multi-block, surfactant copolymers Poloxamer 108 (P108), Poloxamer 188 (P188), and Tetronic 1107 (T1107), of average molecular weight 4700, 8400, and 15,000, respectively, with that of polyethylene glycol (PEG, molecular weight 8000) to suppress aggregation of heat-denatured hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) and bovine s...

Photoinduced ordering of disordered block copolymers (BCPs) would provide an on-demand, nonintrusive route for formation of well-ordered nanostructures in arbitrarily defined regions of an otherwise disordered material. Here we achieve this objective using a rapid and simple approach in which photoconversion of an additive blended with the BCP introduces strong interactions between the additive...

Mechanistically distinct polymerization systems can afford unique block copolymers that would not be accessible by mere sequential polymerization.

Introduction. The well-ordered structures of block copolymer microdomains formed by self-assembly are potentially interesting optical materials, specifically as photonic crystals. Photonic crystals are structures with a periodic variation of refractive index.1-3 For light of the appropriate frequency, such crystals can be used to bend and steer the light, opening up many possible applications s...