555e Anisotropic Swelling in Polymer Nanostructures near a Rigid Substrate

Vijay R. Tirumala1, Christopher M. Stafford1, and Leonidas Ocola2. (1) Polymers Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Dr Stop 8541, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, (2) Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439

Swelling of elastic networks is manifested in different ways depending on the available number of degrees of freedom. In elastic films near a rigid substrate, swelling induces either a simple change in height or a more complex in-plane buckling instability. This difference is due to an elastic mismatch at the film-substrate interface and can be described using a single parameter such as film thickness, given a material of constant elasticity. Unlike polymer thinfilms, patterned polymer nanostructures are constrained equally in all three dimensions near the film-substrate interface. Here, we present results on the out-of-plane buckling instability observed recently in elastic nanostructures. We find that this instability is not a function of a single dimension, but depends strongly on both length-to-width and height-to-width aspect-ratios.