Phase behavior of rigid, amphiphilic star polymers
- Author(s)
- Christian Koch, Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos, Federica Lo Verso, Christos N. Likos
- Abstract
We determine the phase behavior of rigid, amphiphilic diblock copolymer
stars in solution, by employing a lattice model and applying Grand
Canonical Monte Carlo simulations as well as histogram reweighting
techniques. Previous studies on these systems [C. Koch et al., Mol. Phys., 2011, 109, 3049] have found that for fully flexible chains with a moderate functionality ranging from f = 3 to f
= 10 and with a solvophilic A-block smaller than or equal to the
solvophobic B-block, the solution undergoes a liquid–gas macrophase
separation with a well-defined critical point. We find that the
introduction of chain rigidity alters the critical parameters: the
higher the stiffness, the higher the critical temperature Tc and the lower the critical density ϕc. Furthermore, we find that for high rigidities and densities beyond ϕc,
the molecules arrange in cubic, columnar and lamellar ordered phases
whose domain of stability depends on molecular architecture and block
incompatibility. For even higher densities the system remelts again into
another fluid phase. The resulting rich phase diagrams of star polymers that feature amphiphilicity and high rigidity are a manifestation of the character of these hybrid molecules as polymer-based, soft patchy colloids.
- Organisation(s)
- Computational and Soft Matter Physics
- External organisation(s)
- Princeton University, MPC Materials Physics Center
- Journal
- Soft Matter
- Volume
- 9
- Pages
- 7424-7436
- No. of pages
- 13
- ISSN
- 1744-683X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1039/c3sm51135a
- Publication date
- 2013
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103023 Polymer physics, 102009 Computer simulation, 104018 Polymer chemistry
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/1cad7649-1904-431b-858b-2d655cb77d9e