Dynamics of the Directed Assembly of Block Copolymers: The Influence of Entanglements

The understanding of the kinetics of microphase ordering of  block copolymers is important for controlling the morphology of these  materials. In high molecular weight homopolymer melts, the entanglements have a strong influence on the dynamical properties of the melts, thus their influence is expected to be important on the kinetics of ordering of multipolymeric systems. Much of our current understanding of the equilibrium  morphologies of block copolymers has emerged from studies using Self-Consistent Field Theory (SCFT), in which the effect of non-crossability of chains is not taken into account. In this work, we use a particle-based coarse grained model of block copolymers, and introduced slip-springs to model the  effect of entanglements on the dynamics of the melts. The model is able to reproduce both Rouse and Entangled dynamical behavior of homopolymeric melts.  We apply our computational approach to study the influence of entangled dynamics on the the dynamics of the directed assembly of block copolymers driven by  chemically patterned surfaces.