Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Effect Of Nanoscale Confinement On Glass Transition Of Polystyrene Domains From Self-Assembly Of Block Copolymers, C. G. Robertson, T. E. Hogan, M. Rackaitis, Judit D. Puskas, X. Wang

Chemical, Biomolecular, and Corrosion Engineering Faculty Research

The understanding of size-dependent properties is key to the implementation of nanotechnology. One controversial and unresolved topic is the influence of characteristic size on the glass transition temperature (T(g)) for ultrathin films and other nanoscale geometries. We show that T(g) does depend on size for polystyrene spherical domains with diameters from 20 to 70 nm which are formed from phase separation of diblock copolymers containing a poly(styrene-co-butadiene) soft block and a polystyrene hard block. A comparison of our data with published results on other block copolymer systems indicates that the size dependence of T(g) is a consequence of diffuse interfaces …