TY - JOUR
TI - Architecturally-induced tricontinuous cubic morphology in compositionally symmetric miktoarm starblock copolymers
AU - Tselikas, Y.
AU - Hadjichristidis, N.
AU - Lescanec, R.L.
AU - Honeker, C.C.
AU - Wohlgemuth, M.
AU - Thomas, E.L.
JO - Macromolecules
PY - 1996
VL - 29
TODO - 10
SP - 3390-3396
PB - American Chemical Society
SN - 0024-9297, 1520-5835
TODO - 10.1021/ma9515083
TODO - Anionic polymerization;  Characterization;  Conformations;  Entropy;  Molecular structure;  Molecular weight;  Molecules;  Morphology;  Synthesis (chemical);  Volume fraction, Periodic microdomain structure;  Tricontinuous cubic morphology, Block copolymers
TODO - We report the synthesis and morphological characterization of a miktoarm block copolymer architecture: (PSαM-PIM)n-(PSM-PI αM)n, where M ∼ 20 000, n = 1, 2, and the arm asymmetry parameter α = 1, 2, or 4 (α is the ratio of the outer block molecular weight to that of the inner block). These block copolymers are symmetric in overall composition and exhibit n- and α-dependent microdomain morphologies. Alternating lamellae are observed for linear tetrablocks (n = 1), α = 1, 2, 4, and for inverse starblock (n = 2), α = 1, 2. An architecturally-induced morphological transition from lamellae to a tricontinuous cubic structure is observed with n = 2 and α = 4. The formation of the tricontinuous cubic microdomain structure in this compositionally symmetric system is thought to relieve the overcrowding of the four peripheral PS-PI junctions by providing a curved intermaterial dividing surface with a triply periodic microdomain structure, allowing some bridging by the interior blocks of the miktoarm star.
ER -