Morphological investigation of polydisperse asymmetric block copolymer systems of poly(styrene) and poly(methacrylic acid) in the strong segregation regime |
| |
| Authors: | Mehran Asad Ayoubi Kaizheng Zhu Bo Nyström Ulf Olsson Kristoffer Almdal Alexei R. Khokhlov Lennart Piculell |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Division of Physical Chemistry, Center for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lund University, , SE‐22100 Lund, Sweden;2. Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, , Blindern, N‐0315 Oslo, Norway;3. Department of Micro‐ and Nanotechnology, Technical University of Denmark, , DTU Nanotech, DK‐2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark;4. Physics Department, Moscow State University, , Moscow, 119991 Russian Federation |
| |
| Abstract: | Samples of compositionally (highly) asymmetric diblock copolymers and, also, mixtures of diblock and triblock copolymers (the latter obtained as end‐coupling products of two diblock molecules of the mixture), composed of (a) monodisperse majority block(s) of poly(styrene) (PS) and a polydisperse minority block of poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA), microphase separate into spherical PMAA microdomains, either in disordered liquid‐like state or body‐centered‐cubic (BCC) arrangement, at various annealing temperatures T, in the strong segregation regime SSR. We found that (i) the microphase separated state is favored over an anticipated molecularly homogenous state, (ii) the spherical microdomain morphology (with BCC symmetry) is favored over an anticipated hexagonally packed cylindrical morphology, (iii) the extent of the dissolution of short PMAA blocks in the PS material can be quantified, (iv) the spherical microdomains are dilated, and (v) despite molecular‐weight (and architectural) polydispersity, well‐ordered BCC structures can be obtained. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci. Part B: Polym. Phys. 2013 , 51, 1657–1671 |
| |
| Keywords: | block copolymers block polydispersity microdomain morphology microphase separation SAXS rheology, self-assembly WAXS |
|
|
