Effectivity of plasma etching on template removal of reverse micelle deposited nanoparticles

Polymer templated nanoparticles, such as with diblock copolymers, are useful for improving thin-film optical devices by the modification of interfaces between different layers. The existence of an insulating polymer is a challenge to the application of templated nanoparticles. In this paper, we address this issue by assessing the effectivity of gas plasmas in the removal of the polymer templates from a thin film of loaded diblock copolymer reverse micelles to produce iron oxide nanoparticles. Using Raman spectroscopy, we have described a method that can be used to evaluate polymer removal effectivity which can be employed equally for different systems, and was used to quantify other polymer removal methods such as UV/ozone exposure and electron bombardment. We found that a mixture of reactive ion etching and ionic bombardment is highly effective for oxide materials and can be accomplished by leaking air in pure gas plasmas.