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Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 068302 (2003) [4 pages]

Surface Dynamics of Polymer Films

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Hyunjung Kim1,2,3, A. Rühm4,5, L. B. Lurio4,6, J. K. Basu1,7, J. Lal8, D. Lumma4, S. G. J. Mochrie9, and S. K. Sinha1,2
1Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439
2Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 and LANSCE, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
3Department of Physics, Sogang University, Seoul 121-742, Korea
4Center for Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
5Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart, Germany
6Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois 60115
7Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801
8Intense Pulsed Neutron Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439
9Departments of Physics and Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520

Received 24 September 2001; published 13 February 2003

The dynamics of supported polymer films were studied by probing the surface height fluctuations as a function of lateral length scale using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. Measurements were performed on polystyrene (PS) films of thicknesses varying from 84 to 333 nm at temperatures above the PS glass transition temperature. Within a range of wave vectors spanning 10-3 to 10-2   nm-1, good agreement is found between the measured surface dynamics and the theory of overdamped thermal capillary waves on thin films. Quantitatively, the data can be accounted for using the viscosity of bulk PS.

© 2003 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.068302
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.068302
PACS:
82.35.Gh, 61.10.–i, 83.80.Sg
 
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