Morphologies of spin-coated films of a library of diblock copoly(2-oxazoline)s and their correlation to the corresponding surface energies

The influence of surface morphologies on the properties of materials is of essential importance and is therefore a widely discussed topic. In the present contribution, the properties of a set of diblock copoly(2-oxazoline)s are analyzed in terms of their individual morphologies, which have been investigated with tapping-mode SFM. This collection of diblock copolymers consists of 12 diblock copolymers and four corresponding homopolymers, representing a complete 16-membered library of (co-) poly(2-oxazoline)s, composed of four differently substituted 2-oxazoline monomers. For the investigated set of compounds, a correlation between the morphologies of the spin-coated films and their surface energies could be determined.