Competing micellar and cylindrical phases in semi-dilute diblock copolymer solutions
- Author(s)
- Barbara Capone, Jean-Pierre Hansen, Ivan Coluzza
- Abstract
We develop a “first principles” coarse-graining procedure based on a soft effective segment representation of an athermal AB diblock copolymer model in selective solvent, to map out the self-assembly phase diagram for several asymmetry ratios f using Monte Carlo free energy calculations. We find that the free energy per unit volume is surprisingly insensitive to the aggregation number of monodisperse cubic and cylindrical phases for a given polymer volume fraction. The cylindrical phase is found to pre-empt the cubic micellar phases for nearly symmetric (f [similar, equals] 0.6) copolymers.
- Organisation(s)
- Computational and Soft Matter Physics
- External organisation(s)
- University of Cambridge
- Journal
- Soft Matter
- Volume
- 6
- Pages
- 6075-6078
- No. of pages
- 4
- ISSN
- 1744-683X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1039/C0SM00738B
- Publication date
- 2010
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 1030 Physics, Astronomy
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/054af060-21f2-4594-ba74-27fd4e51efbf