Chiral Block Copolymer Structures for Metamaterial Applications.

摘要

This cooperative program between Rice University and National Tsing Hua University researchers focused on the synthesis and processing , morphology and physical characterization of chiral BCP materials. Such materials are valuable for both their optical and mechanical properties, particularly for their potential as chiral metamaterials and lightweight energy absorbing materials. We choose to concentrate our work on the cylinder to helical transition (C to H*) and to investigate the self assembly of a chiral block copolymer into the double gyroid (DG*) block copolymer. The DG* structure is a microdomain geometry with body cubic symmetry and space group Ia3d. It is normally comprised of two interpenetrating and opposite handed chiral networks, related by inversion symmetry forming a bicontinuous microstructure. With the presence of either a right of left handed chiral block, we were interested in the transfer of the molecular scale chiral information to the microdomain scale in these microdomain geometries as well as measuring the physical properties.