Research Article Self-Assembly Investigations of Sulfonated Poly(methyl methacrylate-block-styrene) Diblock Copolymer Thin Films Claudia Piñón-Balderrama , 1 César Leyva-Porras , 2 Roberto Olayo-Valles , 3 Javier Revilla-Vázquez , 4 Ulrich S. Schubert, 5,6 Carlos Guerrero-Sanchez , 5,6 and José Bonilla-Cruz 1 1 Advanced Functional Materials & Nanotechnology Group, Polymer Science and Nanotechnology Lab, Centro de Investigaci´ on en Materiales Avanzados S.C. (CIMAV-Unidad Monterrey), Av. Alianza Norte # 202, PIIT, Autopista Monterrey-Aeropuerto Km 10, C.P. 66628, Apodaca, NL, Mexico 2 Centro de Investigaci´ on en Materiales Avanzados S. C. (CIMAV), Miguel de Cervantes # 120, Complejo Industrial Chihuahua, C.P. 31136, Chihuahua, Chih, Mexico 3 Departamento de F´ ısica, Universidad Aut´ onoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Av. San Rafael Atlixco 186, C.P. 09340, Mexico City, Mexico 4 Departamento de Ingenier´ ıa y Tecnolog´ ıa, Divisi´ on Ciencias Qu´ ımicas, Facultad de Estudios Superiores Cuautitl´ an-UNAM, Av. Primero de Mayo s/n Cuautitl´ an Izcalli, C.P. 54740, Estado de M´ exico, Mexico 5 Laboratory of Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry (IOMC), Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Humboldtstr. 10, 07743 Jena, Germany 6 Jena Center for Sof Matter (JCSM), Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Philosophenweg 7, 07743 Jena, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to Carlos Guerrero-Sanchez; carlos.guerrero.sanchez@uni-jena.de and Jos´ e Bonilla-Cruz; jose.bonilla@cimav.edu.mx Received 24 October 2018; Revised 8 January 2019; Accepted 18 February 2019; Published 1 April 2019 Academic Editor: Katja Loos Copyright © 2019 Claudia Pi˜ n´ on-Balderrama et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Poly(methyl methacrylate-block-styrene) block copolymers (BCs) of low dispersity were selectively sulfonated on the styrenic segment. Several combinations of degree of polymerization and volume fraction of each block were investigated to access diferent self-assembled morphologies. Tin flms of the sulfonated block copolymers were prepared by spin-coating and exposed to solvent vapor (SVA) or thermal annealing (TA) to reach equilibrium morphologies. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was employed for characterizing the flms, which exhibited a variety of nanometric equilibrium and nonequilibrium morphologies. Highly sulfonated samples revealed the formation of a honeycomb-like morphology obtained in solution rather than by the self-assembly of the BC in the solid state. Te described morphologies may be employed in applications such as templates for nanomanufacturing and as cover and binder of catalytic particles in fuel cells. 1. Introduction Block copolymers (BCs) have become promising materials in applications where well-defned nanostructures are required such as photonic crystals [1], high-density information stor- age devices [2] or templates for metals [3], and semiconduct- ing nanowires [4]. Te ease to prepare complex morphologies with controllable size, shape, and periodicities of domains, positions them as ideal candidates for the aforementioned applications. A wide range of desired morphologies of BCs can be predicted by the mean feld theory and summarized in a phase diagram, which typically are defned by the degree of polymerization (N), the volume fraction (), and the Flory- Huggins interaction parameter (). Once , N, and  are set, phase separation of BCs can yield arrays of periodic patterns with length scales in the range from 10 to 100 nm, which can be accessed by diferent treatments such as solvent vapor annealing (SVA) [5], thermal annealing (TA) Hindawi Advances in Polymer Technology Volume 2019, Article ID 4375838, 11 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/4375838