Patternable Mesoporous Thin Film Quantum Materials via Block Copolymer Self-Assembly: An Emergent Technology?

Recent developments in quantum materials hold promise for revolutionizing energy and information technologies. The use of soft matter self-assembly, for example, by employing block copolymers (BCPs) as structure directing or templating agents, offers facile pathways toward quantum metamaterials with highly tunable mesostructures via scalable solution processing. Here, we report the preparation of patternable mesoporous niobium carbonitride-type thin film superconductors through spin-coating of a hybrid solution containing an amphiphilic BCP swollen by niobia sol precursors and subsequent thermal processing in combination with photolithography.

Quantitative Comparison of Dye and Ultrasmall Fluorescent Silica Core-Shell Nanoparticle Probes for Optical Super-Resolution Imaging of Model Block Copolymer Thin Film Surfaces.

In recent years, high-resolution optical imaging in the far field has provided opportunities for alternative approaches to nanocharacterization traditionally dominated by electron and scanning probe microscopies. Here, we report the optical super-resolution imaging of model block copolymer (BCP) thin film surface nanostructures through stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). We compare a set of surface-functionalized fluorescent core-shell silica nanoparticles encapsulating two different organic dyes, Cy3 and Cy5, with the corresponding free dyes in STORM.

Templated Synthesis of Uniform Perovskite Nanowire Arrays.

While the chemical composition of semiconducting metal halide perovskites can be precisely controlled in thin films for photovoltaic devices, the synthesis of perovskite nanostructures with tunable dimensions and composition has not been realized. Here, we describe the templated synthesis of uniform perovskite nanowires with controlled diameter (50-200 nm). Importantly, by providing three examples (CH3NH3PbI3, CH3NH3PbBr3, and Cs2SnI6), we show that this process is composition general and results in oriented nanowire arrays on transparent conductive substrates.