Thermally induced transitions in polymer thin films

Polymers, by virtue of their chemical composition and molecular architecture, exhibit a diverse range of microstructural features and properties. As thin films, due primarily to effects associated with confinement and interfacial interactions, their properties may be film-thickness dependent. The significance of their thicknessdependent behavior is underscored by the fact that polymer films are of technological interest in areas that include, sensors, catalysts and organic electronics. One challenge associated with the use of thin film polymers is to understand the role of confinement and interfacial interactions on thermally induced transitions, such as vitrification and various morphological transitions. To this end, the work presented in this dissertation focuses on the behavior of thermally induced transitions in two thin film polymer-based systems: (1) an A-b-B diblock copolymer which can undergo a disorder-to-order transitions (ODT), wherein the ordered state exhibits varying geometrical symmetries, depending on the relative volume fractions of the A and B components; (2) an amorphous polymer filled with particles of nanoscale dimensions. The first of three problems examined is the influence of supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO₂) on the order-disorder transition of thin film symmetric A-b-B diblock copolymer systems. We show that the transition (xN)ODT, where x is the energetic A-B Flory-Huggins interaction parameter and N is the total degree of polymerization of the copolymer, of the thin film decreased ~ 20% compared to the bulk; the decrease was more significant in scCO₂ environments. The decrease of (xN)ODT in scCO₂ is contrary to observations in bulk copolymer-scCO₂ systems where the effective A-B interactions are weaker, hence the condition for the transition increases to higher (xN)ODT values. With regard to the second problem, we show for the first time experimentally that nanoparticles induced order into thin films of a symmetric A-b-B diblock copolymer at temperatures below the bulk ODT. Finally, we examine the influence of polystyrene (PS) grafted nanoparticles on the glass transition of PS films of varying molecular weight and thickness. We demonstrate that by controlling spatial distribution of nanoparticles, through driving forces of entropic origin, the glass transition temperature of the film can be changed drastically, as much as tens of degrees.