Ring-opening metathesis polymerization for the synthesis of rigid block copolymers and their self-assembly to photonic crystals

Abstract

Highly ordered morphologies accessed through the self-assembly of block copolymers yield versatile hybrid materials with diverse applications. The typically slow and complex self-assembly of block copolymers greatly inhibits their ability to assemble to domain sizes greater than 100 nm. Using ruthenium-mediated ring-opening metathesis polymn., we have synthesized rigid, mol. brush block copolymers that exhibit reduced chain entanglement, drastically lowering the energetic barriers to reorganization. These polymers rapidly equilibrate to nanostructures with domain sizes exceeding 100 nm, providing a bottom-up route to photonic crystals with application-tailored bandgaps that span the entire visible spectrum through modulation of the polymer mol. wt.