Probing Templated Self-Assembly of Block Copolymers using Tomographic Small Angle Neutron Scattering

Ron Jones, NIST-Polymers

Directed Self-Assembly (DSA) using graphoepitaxy, chemically patterned templates, and directed fields has been shown to be an effective route to achieving long range order over short time scales. However, development of this field is limited by the lack of characterization of important structural details such as line edge roughness, sidewall angle, and orientation prior to etching (i.e. the "latent" image). We provide unique measurements of the 3-dimensional morphological evolution in a block copolymer film at varying stages of directed self-assembly using tomographic small angle scattering. Using a combination of small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and neutron reflectivity (NR), we are able to map the 3-dimensional morphology on a wide range of substrates including topological and chemically patterned templates. The data is used to reconstruct, with sub-nm precision, the average orientation, critical dimension, and line width of self-assembled block copolymers as a function of position within a channel.

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