Non‐Native Block Copolymer Thin Film Nanostructures Derived from Iterative Self‐Assembly Processes

Nanostructured block copolymer thin films constitute an elegant tool to generate complex periodic patterns with periodicities ranging from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers. Such well-organized nanostructures are foreseen to enable next-generation nanofabrication research with potent applications in the design of functional materials in biology, optics or microelectronics. This valuable platform is, however, limited by the geometric features attainable from diblock copolymer architectures considering the thermodynamic drive force leaning toward the formation of structures minimizing the interface between the blocks. Therefore, strategies to enrich the variety of structures obtained by block copolymer self-assembly processes are gaining momentum and this progress report reviews the opportunities inherent to iterative BCP self-assembly by considering the emerging strategies for the generation of "non-native" morphologies.