Phase separation induced ordered patterns in thin polymer blend films

Surface deformation and film corrugation during drying of polymer solutions induced by Marangoni phenomena

“…Considerations and analyses along this line have been presented in the literature to explain various manifestations of wrinkling pattern development [31][32][33]. On a different length scale well known are phenomena of phase separation in polymer blends and in evaporating solutions [34][35][36]. However, Marangoni instabilities are also considered a potent factor that may lead to patterned dry films [5,21,35,37].…”

Hydration-induced crystalline transformation of starch polymer under ambient conditions

“…Nanopattern with controlled regularity has an enormous advantage in designing anisotropic materials because of their broad utility and versatility in optics [1], electronics [2,3], and bioengineering [4]. Liquid crystals, as anisotropic mesophases existing between solid crystal and isotropic liquid, have attracted increasing attention [2].…”

Polymer masks for structured surface and plasma etching

“…The confined geometry in the case of thin films (i.e. not more than few hundreds of nm thick) may render those phenomena even more complex due to the predominance of interfacial effects [3]. Surface-directed spinodale decomposition, resulting from the development of composition waves normal to interfaces, has been especially reported and modeled [4][5][6][7], creating layered phaseseparated morphologies that can be trapped in the dried state in the case of rapid solvent evaporation.…”

“…As a result of a subtle interplay between these simultaneous phenomena that occur during the solvent evaporation, it has been shown that the final dried morphology was very sensitive to various parameters such as the characteristics of the polymers (polymer/polymer interaction parameters, molecular weight, crystallinity), of the solvent (evaporation speed, polymer/solvent interaction parameters), of the substrate (surface energy), of the casting conditions [3] (film thickness). Consequently, a wide variety of thin-film morphologies have been reported upon the last two decades, including co-continuous or discontinuous laterally phase-separated morphologies as well as layered system, with compositional heterogeneities length-scale varying from few tens of nanometer to several microns [2,[13][14][15].…”