Morphology control in thin films of PS:PLA homopolymer blends by dip-coating deposition

Highlights: • A process to control the morphology of polymer blends thin film is described. • It is based on the use of dip-coating at various withdrawal speeds. • The process is examined within the capillary and the draining regimes. • The final dried morphology is controlled by the regime of deposition. • This study is of high interest for the preparation of advanced functional surfaces. - Abstract: In this work, smooth polymer films of PS, PLA and their blends, with thicknesses ranging from 20 nm up to 400 nm and very few defects on the surface were obtained by dip-coating. In contrast to the process of spin-coating which is conventionally used to prepare thin films of polymer blends, we showed that depending on the deposition parameters (withdrawal speed and geometry of the reservoir), various morphologies such as layered films and laterally phase-separated domains could be formed for a given blend/solvent pair, offering much more opportunities compared to the spin-coating process. This diversity of morphologies was explained by considering the superposition of different phenomena such as phase separation process, dewetting and vitrification in which parameters such as the drying time, the compatibility of the polymer/solvent pairs and the affinity of the polymer towards the interfaces were suspected to play a significant role. For that purpose, the process of dip-coating was examined within the capillary and the draining regimes (for low and high withdrawal speed respectively) in order to get a full description of the thickness variation and evaporation rate as a function of the deposition parameters.