|Resonant Soft X-Ray Scattering of Tri-Block Copolymers| In
principle, tri-block copolymers (tri-BCPs), consisting of three
chemically distinct polymers covalently joined together at the
ends of each polymer chain, can serve as scaffolds and templates
for fabricating a vast number of nanostructures. While
quantitatively understanding the details of the morphology and
the manner in which the different blocks interact with surfaces
and interfaces is critical to success, previous experiments have
been few. Now, an international team from the United States,
Korea, and Japan has succeeded in combining resonant soft x-ray
scattering (RSoXS) at ALS Beamline 11.0.1 with transmission
electron microscopy tomography (TEMT) and other techniques to
unambiguously determine morphologies comprising two nested
hexagonally packed arrays of nanoscopic, cylindrical
microdomains in the bulk and a core-shell nanostructure in a
thin film. Not only has this work revealed a new phase of ABC
tri-block copolymer with complicated morpho