Thin films of diblock copolymers

Abstract: Block copolymers are an important class of soft materials that have been used in many industrial applications ranging from upholstery foam to box tape, from asphalt additives to drug delivery, from photonic crystals to nanoporous materials. The peculiar properties of block copolymers is their self-assembly property, that leads to the creation of fascinating patterns exhibiting interesting periodicity properties. The pattern determines the physical properties of the compound, and it is therefore of great interest to being able to understand the mechanism behind this pattern formation. It has been seen in experiments that when block copolymers are constrained in thin films, interfacial forces are dominant with respect to bulk forces, and therefore the landscape of patterns can be very different from that of block copolymers in bulk.

In this talk we consider a model, inspired by one derived by Choksi and Ren, to understand pattern formation of diblock copolymers in thin films. We will discuss the relaxed energy and partial regularity of mass constrained minimizers in two spatial dimensions.

This talk is based on a joint work with Marco Bonacini (Università di Trento).

mathematical physicsanalysis of PDEsclassical analysis and ODEscategory theorycomplex variablesfunctional analysislogicmetric geometryoptimization and control

Audience: researchers in the topic

---

VCU ALPS (Analysis, Logic, and Physics Seminar)

Series comments: Description: Research seminar on topics ranging from analysis and logic to mathematical physics.

Meetings will be conducted over Zoom:

Meeting ID: 951 0562 0974

The password is 10 characters, consisting of the name of the ancient Greek mathematician who wrote "Elements" (first letter capitalized) followed by the first 4 primes.

---