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Published September 4, 2012 | Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Rapid self-assembly of brush block copolymers to photonic crystals

Abstract

The reduced chain entanglement of brush polymers over their linear analogs drastically lowers the energetic barriers to reorganization. In this report, we demonstrate the rapid self-assembly of brush block copolymers to nanostructures with photonic bandgaps spanning the entire visible spectrum, from ultraviolet (UV) to near infrared (NIR). Linear relationships were observed between the peak wavelengths of reflection and polymer molecular weights. This work enables "bottom-up" fabrication of photonic crystals with application-tailored bandgaps, through synthetic control of the polymer molecular weight and the method of self-assembly. These polymers could be developed into NIR-reflective paints, to combat the "urban heat island effect" due to NIR photon thermalization.

Additional Information

© 2012 National Academy of Sciences. Contributed by Robert H. Grubbs, July 30, 2012 (sent for review July 3, 2012). Published online before print August 21, 2012. This work was supported by the NSF (CHE-1048404). R.A.W. was supported in part by the DOE "Light-Material Interactions in Energy Conversion" Energy Frontier Research Center (DE-SC0001293). R.A.W. thanks the Resnick Institute for a graduate fellowship. Reflection measurements were collected at the Molecular Materials Research Center of the Beckman Institute of the California Institute of Technology. We thank Zhen-Gang Wang for helpful discussions and Bryce Sadtler for assistance with the reflection measurements. B.R.S. and R.A.W. contributed equally to this work. Author contributions: R.A.W., Y.X., and R.H.G. designed research; B.R.S., R.A.W., G.M.M., and Y.X. performed research; B.R.S. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; B.R.S., R.A.W., G.M.M., Y.X., and H.A.A. analyzed data; and B.R.S., R.A.W., G.M.M., Y.X., H.A.A., and R.H.G. wrote the paper. This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/ doi:10.1073/pnas.1213055109/-/DCSupplemental. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Attached Files

Published - PNAS-2012-Sveinbjornsson-14332-6.pdf

Supplemental Material - Appendix.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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