The Effect of Surface Interactions on the Viscosity of Polymer Thin Films

Previously, we reported that the viscosity of a polymer film can be measured in situ by observing the liquid-liquid dewetting of polymer bilayer films. In this study, we use the technique to investigate the effect of film thickness and surface interactions on the effective viscosity of polymer thin films. We found that the effective viscosity increases dramatically with decreasing the film thickness. We attribute this to the pinning of the polymer chains at the strongly interacting polymer/Silicon interface.