Direct Observation of Highly Ordered Dendrimer Soft
Building Blocks over a Large Area
- Publication date
- Publisher
Abstract
Developing large-area, single domain
of organic soft-building blocks such as block copolymers, colloids,
and supramolecular materials is one of the most important issues in
the materials science and nanotechnology. Owing to their small sizes,
complex molecular architectures, and high mobility, supramolecular
materials are not well-suited for building large area, single domain
structures. In the described study, a single domain of supramolecular
columnar dendrimers was created over large area. The columnar structures
in these domains have smaller (4.5 nm) diameters, higher area densities
(ca. 36 Tera-dots/in<sup>2</sup>) and larger domains (>0.1 ×
0.1 mm<sup>2</sup>) than those of all existing BCP and colloidal assemblies.
By simply annealing dendrimer thin films between two flat solid surfaces,
single domains of hexagonal columnar structures are created over large
macroscopic areas. Observations made in this effort should serve as
the foundation for the design of new routes for bottom-up lithography
based on supramolecular building blocks