Effects of Confinement Geometry on Diblock Copolymer Systems Using Finite Element Analysis

Diblock copolymers have received much attention in recent years due to the unique, highly ordered microstructures they form. Potential applications of diblock copolymers include nanowire fabrication, organic electronics, and nanolithography. The formation of microstructures in a bulk system depends on the composition of the block copolymer and the strength of the interaction force that leads to self segregation. The addition of geometric confinement leads to a wider variety of structures compared to a bulk system. These structures depend on the geometry of the confinement, e.g the walls of a nanopore, and the strength of the interaction between the pore wall and polymers. Accurately predicting structures for a given composition, segregation strength, and confinement geometry is a challenge not well suited for experimental work. We use computational simulations to greatly simplify the process of exploring diblock copolymer systems across a large range of parameter values. Our in house framework allows for simple creation of phase diagrams of diblock copolymer systems in any confinement geometry. In this work we investigate the microstructures of diblock copolymer systems confined in a triangular nanopore of varying sizes