Electric fields have been used to align block copolymer microstructures for more than twenty years. By means of time-resolved in-situ synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering this thesis studies the influence of this external stimulus on physical quantities of concentrated diblock copolymer solutions in non-selective solvents. Amongst these quantities are equilibrium domain spacings, thermodynamic domain stabilities as a function of grain orientation with respect to the external stimulus, and the influence of nanoparticles on mechanistic pathways for electric field-induced domain alignment. Additionally, a modified experimental setup for high-throughput data acquisition by means of optical methods is established.
Christian Pester