Novel photonic and phononic materials with complex bicontinuous morphologies

The objective of this work is to study the structure and properties of a new family of triblock copolymer materials with extremely high molecular weight of blocks for applications as photonic and phononic crystals. It is noteworthy that these materials enable fabrication of low-cost and very effective polymer coatings for applications in photonic coatings and organic electronics as both photonic and phononic band gap materials. In the proposed experiment, we will address the structure of the new type of polymer materials based on linear ABC block copolymers and asymmetrical star-based copolymers forming cubic bicontinuous phase-separated morphologies with very large lattice constants, such as single or double gyroid, core-shell gyroid and diamond. In addition to the all-polymer samples we are planning to study polymer nanocomposites filled with various nanoparticles of inorganic or metallic nature which will increase the dielectric contrast between the domains.