Date/Time
Date(s) - 26/02/2014
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Title: Monte Carlo Field-Theoretic Simulations Applied to Block Copolymer Melts

Speaker: Dr. Mark Matsen

Institute: Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology

Location: ABB 102

Description:

Block copolymers are polymer molecules with two (or more) chemical distinct portions, generally labelled A and B. The A and B components tend to be incompatible, which causes the molecules to self-assemble into various elaborate nano-structures with their A and B blocks in separate A- and B-rich domains. Self-consistent field theory (SCFT) has been remarkably successful in predicting the geometry of these ordered phases and the transitions between them, but the theory has some short comings due to the fact it incorporates the mean-field approximation. Of course, this can be overcome, in principle, by simulating the system with, for example, Monte Carlo methods. However, it is impractical to perform conventional particle-based simulations for realistic conditions because polymer molecules are generally very large. This obstacle has recently been overcome by applying a clever transformation that converts the particle-based Hamiltonian into a mathematically equivalent field-based Hamiltonian. We demonstrate a variant of this method called Monte Carlo field-theoretic simulations (MC-FTS), on the simple symmetric diblock copolymer melt.