Enhanced Dynamics of Confined Polymers near the Immiscible Polymer-Polymer Interface: Neutron Reflectivity Studies.

For polymer-blend films, local dynamics in confined polymer domains tend to differ from the bulk because of significant contributions from the polymer-polymer interface. Herein, we investigated the diffusion dynamics of entangled polymer thin films confined between different polymers in a direction perpendicular to the surface using neutron reflectivity. We found that a bilayer of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and deuterated PMMA (dPMMA) sandwiched between polystyrene (PS) layers exhibited significant increase in mobility near the polymer-polymer interface with decreasing PMMA thickness. This indicates that the contribution of repulsive interactions at the immiscible polymer-polymer interface becomes more significant as the film thickness decreases. We also found that the interfacial roughness between PMMA and PS (28 Å at equilibrium) and soft confinement of PS layers did not significantly affect the change in the diffusion dynamics of the adjacent PMMA. This was evidenced by comparison with the diffusion results of multilayers with a flat interface (8 Å at equilibrium) between PMMA and hard PS by UV cross-linking.

Effects of carbon concentration on high-hardness plasma-polymer-fluorocarbon film deposited by mid-range frequency sputtering.

We propose a method for fabricating high-hardness plasma-polymer-fluorocarbon (PPFC) thin films with controllable optical and surface properties via manipulation of the target composition design and sputtering power density. The carbon/polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) composite polymeric material targets with the low electrical resistance were prepared by press-molding using a mechanically mixed powder of PTFE, carbon nanotubes, and graphite. The composite targets showed electrical sheet resistances of 0.1-100 Ω/sq. PPFC thin films were deposited by mid-range frequency (MF) sputtering at power densities within 0.62~4.92 W/cm2. The maximum surface hardness of the PPFC thin film was 4.75 GPa, which was 21.6 times higher than that of fluorocarbon thin film sputtered from PTFE under the same conditions. With the increase of the carbon concentration in the target, the carbon cross-linking density of the PPFC thin film increased but the fluorine concentration decreased. The concentration of fluorine in the PPFC thin films grew with increasing sputtering power density. The MF sputtered carbon-rich PPFC thin films are controllable with physical properties of optical transmittance, surface hardness and surface water repellency which could be applied as protective layers for transparent flexible devices.