Controlled Disordering in Metal-Infiltrated Block Copolymer Nanopatterns

Disordered structures in the nanoscale can be of particular interest in photonics owing to their unique capability to localize wave-like quasiparticles – a renowned phenomenon known as Anderson localization. Aims to apply such an intriguing phenomenon to devices such as random lasers and plasmonic waveguides have motivated intensive study on structures accommodating intentionally introduced defects. However, reproducible fabrication of nanostructures with a controlled degree of disorder still remains challenging.

In this study, we present nanostructures with systematic variation of disorder employing the metal-infiltrated block copolymer system. In particular, we deliberately introduced defects into a single crystalline hexagonal array built on a sphere-forming block copolymer thin film. Here, disordering was induced by the adjustment of annealing temperature, and various processing parameters were proposed to broaden the spectrum of disorder. Such tunable parameters include the relative ratio of different metal precursors incorporated into the core blocks and the blending ratio with homopolymers. The results of this study potentially offer a platform for designing and engineering disordered systems that could mediate quasiparticle localization.