Jillian Buriak

Nanopatterning via Block Copolymer Self-Assembly

Self-assembled nanostructures continue to be the focus of intense research due to their obvious inspiration from Nature, and secondly, their enormous utility for patterning nanoscale structures with little outside intervention.  The directed self-assembly of block copolymers is a widely studied example that has great potential for producing a broad array of regular and intricate nanostructures with only a small degree of external guidance, or none at all. Thin layers of block copolymers can be induced to self-assemble to form very detailed patterns on surfaces, and in this context, they can be used a template for directing surface chemistry on a range of different technologically relevant interfaces. The spatially defined surface chemistry that can be accomplished, using the nanoscale direction from the block copolymers, ranges from metallization, to metal oxide formation, to the covalent attachment of small molecules, to highly controlled anisotropic surface etching. There remain, however, many problems, many of which are defined by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (www.itrs.net), with regards to block copolymer-mediated directed self-assembly. Being able to produce sub-10 nm features, with very low line edge roughness in a rapid fashion, accompanied by very low error rates is both challenging and fascinating. Various routes towards accessing non-equilibrium structures with doubling and tripling of feature densities will be discussed, along with quantification of error rates and defects. Integration and application of plasmonics to expand the repertoire of block copolymer self assembly-enabled surface functionalization.