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Balancing the interfacial interactions between a polymer and substrate is one of the most commonly employed methods to ensure the vertical orientation of nanodomains in block copolymer lithography. Although a number of technologies have been developed to meet this challenge, there remains a need for a universal solution for surface neutralization that combines simple synthesis, fast processing times, generality toward substrate, low density of film defects, and good surface adhesion. The chemistry of ketenes, which combines highly efficient polymer crosslinking through dimerization and surface adhesion through reaction with the substrate, is shown to be well suited to the challenge. The versatile chemistry of ketenes are accessed through the post-polymerization of Meldrum's acid, which can be easily incorporated into copolymers through controlled radical polymerization processes. Further, the Meldrum's acid monomer is synthesized on a large scale in one step without the need for chromatography. Processing times of seconds, low defect density, simple synthetic procedures, and good substrate adhesion make these materials attractive as robust block copolymer neutralization layers.

Here, spontaneous lamellar alignment in a thickness-modulated block copolymer film is presented as a facile, scalable, and general approach for creating a highly aligned lamellar morphology. Thickness-modulated block copolymer films are prepared on neutral surfaces by various methods, such as solution dropping, dewetting-induced self-organized patterning, and thermal imprinting. Regardless of the film preparation method, the self-assembled lamellar domains become spontaneously aligned along the thickness gradient after sufficient thermal annealing. Real-time AFM imaging reveals that spontaneous alignment occurs through the directional growth of well-ordered domains along the thickness gradient, which is accompanied by defect dynamics, with vertical linear defects moving from thicker parts of the film towards the thinner ones, reducing their length and thus the associated energy. The mechanism underlying this interesting self-aligning behavior is provided by a ‘geometric anchoring’ phenomenon, originally envisioned to account for the liquid crystal alignment under a non-flat geometry of confinement. This novel self-aligning principle offers a valuable opportunity to control nanoscale alignment in block copolymer films by manipulating the, much larger, microscale morphology.

We thank Sung Soon Bai for providing technical support for SEM characterization. This work was supported by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), the Korea Research Foundation (KRF-2005-003-D00085), the second stage of the Brain Korea 21 Project, the Korea Science & Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) (R01-2005-000-10456-0), the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Fundamental R&D Program for Core Technology of Materials funded by the Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. Supporting Information is available online from Wiley InterScience or from the author.

We have improved a white color balance using multi-grating period structure in the holographic backlight units that can be applicable to mobile LCD panel where several LEDs are placed at edge of guide plate as light sources. New H-LGP is based on the characteristics of grating and its diffraction angle can be determined by specific grating period. With this idea, hologram backlight unit can realize not only lower weight and less power consumption but also higher light utilization by eliminating couple of prismatic sheets which have been widely used in conventional unit inevitably.