Nanoscale engineering of two-dimensional disordered hyperuniform block-copolymer assemblies

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2015 Nov;92(5):050601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.92.050601. Epub 2015 Nov 10.

Abstract

Disordered hyperuniform (DH) media have been recognized as a new state of disordered matter that broadens our vision of material engineering. Here, long-range correlated disordered two-dimensional patterns are fabricated by self-assembling of spherical diblock-copolymer (BCP) micelles. Control of the self-assembling parameters leads to the formation of DH patterns of micelles that can host nanoscale material inclusions, therefore providing an effective strategy for fabricating multimaterial DH structures at molecular scale. Centroidal patterns are accurately determined by virtue of BCP micelles loaded with metal nanoparticles. Our analysis reveals the signature of nearly ideal DH BCP assemblies in the local density fluctuation and a dominant linear scaling in the local number fluctuation.