Nanoporous Materials from Ordered and Disordered Block Polymers

Block polymers are marvelous self-assembling materials that have found uses from the ordinary (e.g., pressure sensitive adhesives) to the fantastic (e.g., templates for nanolithography). By incorporating blocks that can undergo subsequent chemical transformations, the set of self-assembled morphologies that block polymers adopt can be modified to take advantage of the nanoscopic dimensions and narrow feature size distributions to generate new functional materials that have technological potential in wide ranging applications. In this presentation I will present our work over the past two decades on the design and development of block polymers that contain an etchable component for the generation of nanoporous materials from block polymer precursors. I will emphasize the preparation of both bulk and thin film nanoporous materials and the production of nanoporous materials from both ordered and disordered block polymers.