Self-Assembled Block Copolymers: Advances, Applications, and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

Technological innovations have driven the microelectronics industry toward miniaturized devices with higher processing speeds, and these devices could provide a model for revolutionary advances in industrial processes and equipment in the future. With the development of enabling technologies, the trend toward small-scale production components will continue. Extremely small-scale process building blocks that allow for the synthesis or formation of new material forms and products will emerge. Nanofabrication processes will evolve from laboratory curiosities to production processes. The self-assembly of complex, precise functional structures will lead to the development of micro-devices, such as sensors, computational elements, medical robots, and macroscopic devices constructed from fundamental building blocks. Self-assembled block copolymers (BCPs) have played a critical role and made significant contributions towards achieving this aim since the introduction of sub-50 nm-scale highly ordered self-assembled structures from BCPs for nanopatterning applications. With numerous pivotal contributions, the directed self-assembly of BCPs enables the microelectronic field to bring the length scale down to a 10 nm feature size, facilitating breakthroughs in experimental techniques and enabling the synthesis and characterization of a wide range of block copolymers with tailored composition, architectures, and properties.

This Special Issue aims to collate research papers on the advancements in the field of BCPs in terms of their synthesis, self-assembly techniques, applications, and nanopatterning beyond traditional directed self-assembly (DSA) methods.

Authors are welcome to submit their latest work(s) in the form of full original research articles, communications, or review papers.

Dr. Hemali Rathnayake
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• block copolymers
• atomic scale patterning
• self-assembly
• directed self-assembly
• nanofabrication