Using a single mask to create multiple patterns in three-component, photoreactive blends

Ordered patterns in electroactive polymer ionic liquid blends: effect of long range interactions

Designing multifunctional soft materials via pattern formation has been a major challenge for scientists and engineers. Soft materials based on polymers are the perfect candidates for designing such materials as they are not only easy to handle, but also offer diverse combinations of mechanical and chemical properties. Here, we present a polymer-based ternary system and reveal, using modelling and simulations, the mechanisms for creating patterned surfaces. Specifically, we consider polymer ionic liquid (PIL) blends and demonstrate that exposure to a uniform electric field results in the formation of ordered patterns through phase separation. Our approach is based on reaction-diffusion phenomena and utilizes Poisson-Boltzmann-Nernst-Planck equations to capture the long-range interactions of ionic liquids in both weak and strong segregation limits. Furthermore, we elucidate that the ordered patterns in our PIL blend can be tuned by changing the direction of the electric field. From the structural characterization point of view, we reveal that the presence of the electric field significantly enhances the domain growth rate and their respective ordering in a remarkable fashion. We believe this non-invasive technique is a significant step towards the development of ordered structures at microscopic length scales and can be utilized for micro-scale fabrication from soft materials.

Photo-induced bond breaking during phase separation kinetics of block copolymer melts: a dissipative particle dynamics study

Using a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation method, we study the phase separation dynamics in block copolymer (BCP) melts in d = 3, subjected to external stimuli such as light. An initial homogeneous BCP melt is rapidly quenched to a temperature T < T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature. We then allow the system to undergo alternate light "on" and "off" cycles. An on-cycle breaks the stimuli-sensitive bonds connecting both the blocks A and B in the BCP melt, and during the off-cycle, the broken bonds recombine. By simulating the effect of light, we isolate scenarios where phase separation begins with the light off (set 1); the cooperative interactions within the system allow it to undergo microphase separation. When the phase separation starts with the light on (set 2), the system undergoes macrophase separation due to bond breaking. Here, we report the role of alternate cycles on domain morphology by varying the bond-breaking probability for both set 1 and set 2, respectively. We observe that the scaling functions depend upon the conditions mentioned above that change the time scale of the evolving morphologies in various cycles. However, in all the cases, the average domain size respects the power-law growth: R(t) ∼t^φ at late times, where φ is the dynamic growth exponent. After a short-lived diffusive growth (φ∼ 1/3) at early times, φ illustrates a crossover from the viscous hydrodynamic (φ∼ 1) to the inertial hydrodynamic (φ∼ 2/3) regimes at late times.

Spinodal decomposition of chemically reactive binary mixtures

We simulate the influence of a reversible isomerization reaction on the phase segregation process occurring after spinodal decomposition of a deeply quenched regular binary mixture, restricting attention to systems wherein material transport occurs solely by diffusion. Our theoretical approach follows a diffuse-interface model of partially miscible binary mixtures wherein the coupling between reaction and diffusion is addressed within the frame of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, leading to a linear dependence of the reaction rate on the chemical affinity. Ultimately, the rate for an elementary reaction depends on the local part of the chemical potential difference since reaction is an inherently local phenomenon. Based on two-dimensional simulation results, we express the competition between segregation and reaction as a function of the Damköhler number. For a phase-separating mixture with components having different physical properties, a skewed phase diagram leads, at large times, to a system converging to a single-phase equilibrium state, corresponding to the absolute minimum of the Gibbs free energy. This conclusion continues to hold for the critical phase separation of an ideally perfectly symmetric binary mixture, where the choice of final equilibrium state at large times depends on the initial mean concentration being slightly larger or less than the critical concentration.