Universality of Block Copolymer Melts

Abstract

Simulations of five different coarse-grained models of symmetric diblock copolymer melts are compared to demonstrate a universal (i.e., model-independent) dependence of the free energy on the invariant degree of polymerization $\overline{N}$, and to study universal properties of the order-disorder transition (ODT). The ODT appears to exhibit two regimes: Systems of very long chains ($\overline{N}\gtrsim 10^4$) are well described by the Fredrickson-Helfand theory, which assumes weak segregation near the ODT. Systems of smaller but experimentally relevant values, $\overline{N}\lesssim 10^4$, undergo a transition between strongly segregated disordered and lamellar phases that, though universal, is not adequately described by any existing theory.

5 pages, 4 figures, plus Supplemental Material

References in corpus (4)

• Well-Tempered Metadynamics: A Smoothly Converging and Tunable Free-Energy Method
• Renormalization of the one-loop theory of fluctuations in polymer blends and diblock copolymer melts
• Intramolecular Form Factor in Dense Polymer Systems: Systematic Deviations from the Debye formula
• Renormalized One-loop Theory of Correlations in Disordered Diblock Copolymers

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Strong scaling of general-purpose molecular dynamics simulations on GPUs
• One size fits all: equilibrating chemically different polymer liquids through universal long-wavelength description
• How ill-defined constituents produce well-defined nanoparticles: Effect of polymer dispersity on the uniformity of copolymeric micelles
• Simple Calibration of Block Copolymer Melt Models
• Self-assembly in rod/coil block copolymers: Degenerate behavior under nonconfinement
• 5D Entanglement in Star Polymer Dynamics