Evolution of Kink Bands and Tilt Boundaries in Block Copolymers at Large Shear Strains Lei Qiao and Karen I. Winey* Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6272 Received August 4, 1999; Revised Manuscript Received December 6, 1999 ABSTRACT: The evolution of kink bands and kink band boundaries in a prealigned poly(styrene-b- ethylene propylene) lamellar diblock copolymer was investigated by applying steady shear at strains in the range of 1-10 strain units. Boundary morphologies were characterized using transmission electron microscopy. As the shear strain increases, both the kink bands and the lamellae within the kink bands rotate continuously toward the shearing direction, leading to a decrease in the tilt boundary angle and the kink band boundary angle. Simultaneously, the nature of the kink band boundary transforms. The chevron boundaries present at low strains, and thus large tilt angles, become omega boundaries as the strain increases to ∼3 strain units. At higher strains (∼5 strain units), the tilt angle further decreases, and the omega boundaries start to break, preferentially in the PS microdomains. Delamination of the PS microdomains was also observed at the highest strain amplitude (10 strain units), which was associated with the limited extent of entanglement across the PS microdomains. Introduction The equilibrium morphologies in diblock copolymers are known to depend on the volume fraction, the total molecular weight, and the interaction parameter of the material. These microphase-separated morphologies are well-documented for a variety of materials in the weak, intermediate, and strong segregation limits. Presently, block copolymers are being considered for a variety of applications that would use their nanostructured mor- phologies. The optical, permeability, and electrical properties of microphase-separated block copolymers depend on the chemical species, the morphology type (lamellae, gyroid, cylinders, etc.), the global orientation of the morphology, and the topological defects in the morphology. Of these four controlling factors, topological defects in block copolymers have received the least attention. The importance of defects is twofold. The type, size, and density of defects in block copolymers alter the macroscopic properties. Furthermore, many of these materials are likely to be processed in their microphase- separated state in which the motion and transformation of defects determines the plasticity of the diblock copolymers. Experimental and theoretical efforts to understand defects, particularly grain boundaries, have been made for the quiescent state of block copolymers. 1-3 Specifi- cally, Gido and Thomas studied the tilt boundary, which is the most common boundary type in lamellar diblock copolymers. They reported three types of tilt boundary morphologies in a poly(styrene-b-butadiene) diblock copolymer: the chevron tilt boundary, in which lamellae bend smoothly across the grain boundary; the omega tilt boundary, in which one of the microdomains forms protrusions while the other microdomain forms Ω-shaped caps around the protrusions; and finally, the T-junction in which the lamellae are discontinuous across the boundary as the tilt boundary becomes highly asym- metric. 1 They also observed that the chevron tilt bound- aries exist predominately at high tilt angles while the omega boundaries exist at lower boundary angles. Matsen subsequently examined the first two types of tilt boundaries theoretically using a self-consistent-field theory. 2 He also found an evolution in the microdomain shape from the chevron to the omega boundary as the tilt angle decreases. Matsen explained this morphologi- cal transition in terms of three energy contributions: the interfacial bending energy between A/B micro- domains, the interfacial tension, and packing frustra- tion. Unlike the study of a single grain boundary in a block copolymer sample annealed quiescently, Polis and Win- ey have studied kink bands in a lamellar block copoly- mer in the presence of an external shear field. 4,5 These shear-induced kink bands consist of pairs of opposite tilt boundaries separated by a width of ∼0.5 μm. Kink bands are an important low-energy defect structure in lamellar diblock copolymers 2,6 and the origin of the pre- viously observed parallel-transverse biaxial texture. 4,7-9 These defects initiate in prealigned block copolymers when the shear strain exceeds a critical value 5 and grow through a lamellar rotation mechanism. 10 These previ- ous studies focused on the initiation of kink bands and the early stages of kink band growth with strains less than 1 strain unit. In contrast, we report the evolution of kink bands in a lamellar diblock copolymer under steady shear in the range of 1-10 strain units; specif- ically we examine the morphological transformations at the kink band boundaries. Experimental Section Sample Preparation. The polymer used in this study was poly(styrene-b-ethylene propylene) diblock copolymer (Kraton G1701), provided by Shell Chemical Co. It was previously used by Polis and Winey 4,5 to study kink bands at <100% shear strain. It has a weight-averaged molecular weight of 110 000 g/mol with 37 wt % styrene monomeric unit content. The copolymer will be referred to as SEP(40-70), corresponding to the nominal molecular weights of the PS and PEP blocks. Films ∼1 mm thick of SEP(40-70) having less than 1 wt % Irganox 1010 were cast at room temperature from a 5 wt % toluene solution. (Irganox 1010 is an antioxidant supplied by * Corresponding author. E-mail winey@lrsm.upenn.edu. 851 Macromolecules 2000, 33, 851-856 10.1021/ma991303k CCC: $19.00 © 2000 American Chemical Society Published on Web 01/22/2000 Downloaded via UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA on October 23, 2024 at 19:36:17 (UTC). See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.