Phase behavior of symmetric linear multiblock copolymers

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the phase behavior of a single linear multiblock copolymer with blocks of A- and B-type monomers under poor solvent conditions, varying the block length $N$, number of blocks $n$, and the solvent quality (by variation of the temperature $T$). The fraction $f$ of A-type monomers is kept constant and equal to 0.5, and always the lengths of A and B blocks were equal ($N_A=N_B=N$), as well as the number of blocks ($n_A=n_B=n$). We identify the three following regimes where: (i) full microphase separation between blocks of different type occurs (all blocks of A-type monomers form a single cluster, while all blocks of B-type monomers form another), (ii) full microphase separation is observed with a certain probability, and (iii) full microphase separation can not take place. For very high number of blocks $n$ and very high $N$ (not accessible to our simulations) further investigation is needed.

5 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (2)

• Helical structures from an isotropic homopolymer model
• Microphase separation in linear multiblock copolymers under poor solvent conditions