Self‐Assembly of Diblock‐Copolymer Micelles for Template‐Based Preparation of PbTiO₃ Nanograins

Abstract

Abstract A bottom‐up fabrication route for PbTiO 3 nanograins grown on predefined TiO 2 nanostructures used as seeds is presented. The structuring of the TiO 2 seeds is performed using a self‐organized template constructed from a gold‐loaded micellar monofilm. With this fabrication process, TiO 2 seeds and PbTiO 3 grains with diameters of 12 and 30 nm, respectively, are prepared without the need for electron‐beam lithography. The dimensions of the structure imposed by the micellar template are transferred through all the processing steps to the final PbTiO 3 grains. Furthermore, it is shown that the intermicelle distance and the degree of order in the dried monofilm is mainly determined by the preparation conditions, such as the pulling velocity in the dipping process and the strength of the surface–micelle interaction, and not necessarily by the architectural properties (block length and ratio) of the diblock copolymers that build the micelles. The intermicelle spacing in the dried film is much smaller than the micelle dimensions in solution, and approaches the dimensions of a fully collapsed micelle when the dipping process is performed slowly enough.